Boko Haram kidnap eight more teen girls in Nigeria overnight

Zee Media Bureau/Supriya Jha Abuja: Even as Nigeria struggles to come to terms with the abduction of more than 200 girls in April, the militants have kidnapped eight more teenage girls from a village in northeastern Nigeria, reports said Tuesday. According to a report in the Voice of America, eight girls aged 12 to 15 were abducted from Warabe village near one of their strongholds in northeast Nigeria overnight on Tuesday. The militants were many, and arrived in two trucks painted in Army colour, the report quoted a villager as saying. The abduction comes just after the Boko Haram claimed the previous mass kidnapping of girs on April 14. April 14 is a horrific date for all those parents in Nigeria whose daughters were kidnapped by Boko Haram militants from a boarding school in Nigeria`s Chibok, but the trauma grew manyfold darker when the militant group`s leader released a video, insanely describing the girls` fate. Claiming for the first time in a video first accessed by the AFP news agency, Boko Harma leader Abubakar Shekau said that the girls were not meant to be in school and it is Allah`s instruction that they must be sold. Adding to the horror is the tone and tenor of the militant Abubakar Shekau who is also seen laughing in the video while saying that the girls would be sold in a human market. " Allah says they should be sold. I `ll sell them, I will sell women," he said. Reports have it that the girls, who were in final year of the boarding school, were forced to marry their abductors at a normal bride rate of $12, according to the BBC.

The heinous abduction and later the video sent by the militant group has been termed as a terrible tragedy and outrage by the US. White House spokesman Jay Carney said President Barack Obama was being briefed as his national security team was monitoring developments. “The state department has been in regular touch with the Nigerian government about what we might do to help support its efforts to find and free these young women," he said. It has been almost three weeks since more than 200 girls were abducted but the authorities in Nigeria have not been able to trace them. According to Halite Aliyu of the Borno-Yobe People`s Forum, the girls might have been taken across the borders, some to Cameroon and Chad, reported the Associated Press. Similar remarks were given by UK Foreign Office minister Mark Simmonds, who told the BBC that the area where girls are rumoured to be held - the vast geographical area of the north-east – is a wild territory, difficult for land and air-based surveillance operations and has “extremely porous borders with neighbouring countries - Chad, Cameroon, Niger, etc”. Saying that the UK was planning support to the Nigerian government, he said that British officials were in US for discussing the same. Nigeria government is facing increasing flak over its failure to rescue the girls. The military, too is being criticised a lot as despite having immense power during an 11-month state of emergency in three northeastern states, the Army has failed to rein in the Islamic terrorism. Boko Haram, when translated to English means "Western education is sin". It was designated as a terrorist organisation in November 2013. It has been launchingb increasing number of attacks on schools in northern Nigeria, killing and abducting many innocent students.