Female conscripts of the Boko Haram sect were said to have shot dead seven soldiers who were among counter-insurgency troops in the northeast. The women, the Associated Press, AP, reports, shot at the unsuspecting troops in a remote village, Nbita, last week. Soldiers were also said to have killed a dozen of the female terrorists.
The captive women were among nearly 700 women and girls who have been rescued from Boko Haram hideouts in the vast Sambisa forest in recent days.
They are now being looked after at the Malkohi Internally Displaced Persons’ (IDPs’) camp, outside Yola, where many are showing signs of severe trauma and exhaustion. They were taken into the camp on Saturday after the military released them to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA).
A number of the children also have distended stomachs and tinted orange hair – which are signs of malnutrition.
Government officials said the women were being used as cooks, sex slaves and human shields in the Boko Haram camps.
Many are believed to have been abducted during raids on villages in which hundreds of menfolk were killed.
The military has said it liberated 677 girls and women and destroyed more than a dozen insurgent camps.
The women arrived at the camp in Yola, the capital of Adamawa State, on the back of open pick-up trucks.
One of the rescued women at the Malkohi Internally Displaced Persons’ (IDPs’) Camp outside Yola, the Adamawa State capital, has relived their experience.
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