Maiduguri: Nigerian troops rescued nearly 300 girls and women during an offensive against Boko Haram militants in the northeastern Sambisa Forest, the military said, but they did not include any of the schoolgirls kidnapped a year ago.
The army announced the rescue on Twitter and said it was screening and interviewing the abducted girls and women.
Troops destroyed and cleared four militant camps and rescued 200 abducted girls and 93 women "but they are not the Chibok girls," army spokesman Col. Sani Usman told The Associated Press.
Nearly 300 schoolgirls were kidnapped from the northeastern town of Chibok by the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram in April 2014. The militants took the schoolgirls in trucks into the Sambisa Forest. Dozens escaped, but 219 remain missing.
The plight of the schoolgirls, who have become known as "the Chibok girls," aroused international outrage and a campaign for their release under the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls.
Their kidnapping brought Boko Haram to the attention of the world, with even U.S. First lady Michelle Obama becoming involved as she tweeted a photograph of herself holding the campaign sign.
Boko Haram has kidnapped an unknown number of girls, women and young men to be used as sex slaves and fighters. Many have escaped or been released as Boko Haram has fled a multinational offensive that began at the end of January.
Boko Haram also has used girls and women as suicide bombers, sending them into crowded market places and elsewhere.
A month ago the Nigerian military began pounding the Sambisa Forest in air raids, an assault they said earlier they had been avoiding for fear of killing the Chibok schoolgirls, or inciting their captors to kill them.
Two weeks ago, counterinsurgency spokesman Mike Omeri said a multinational offensive that began at the end of January had driven Boko Haram from all major towns in the northeast and that Nigerian forces were concentrating on the Islamic militant stronghold in the Sambisa Forest. Omeri said the military believed that the Chibok girls might be held there.
On Monday, a local government committee reported burying hundreds of skeletons of children, women and men believed killed by Boko Haram in Damasak, a town on the border with Niger.
"I know that there was a large-scale atrocity, but I cannot tell you the precise number of dead bodies," Senator-elect Abubakar Kyari told reporters in Maiduguri, the Borno state capital 180 kilometers (110 miles) southeast of Damasak.
Damasak was recaptured by troops from Chad and Niger last month and had been occupied by the Islamic extremists since November. (AAP)
