by Our Foreign Desk

A GROUP of 275 women and children rescued from Boko Haram arrived at a Nigerian refugee camp in Yola on Saturday after a three-day journey to safety.

Nigeria’s military had brought them from the Sambisa forest, the last Boko Haram stronghold.

A spokesmen said it had rescued more than 677 girls and women and destroyed more than a dozen insurgent camps in the past week.

On the first day of the three-day trip, a military vehicle fell victim to a landmine, wounding two soldiers. Soldiers on foot subsequently swept the road ahead of the convoy, so it took three days to travel the 200 miles to Yola, the capital of Adamawa state.

Dozens of the rescued civilians were taken to the clinic at the refugee camp, set up in an unused boarding school.

Many were then dispatched to a hospital in town, suffering from malaria, diarrhoea and malnutrition.

Most of the rescued women were deeply traumatised, exhausted and too confused to realise they were safe, said army spokesman Colonel Sani Usman.

Some had shot at their rescuers and companions had been killed when Boko Haram used them as human shields.

Nigerian soldiers had been shocked when some women opened fire on troops who had come to rescue them in the village of Nbita last week. The women killed seven soldiers before 12 of them were killed in turn.