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Dozens more women and girls have been abducted in north-east Nigeria by the Boko Haram extremist group, according to local government officials.
Following the October 18 kidnapping of around 80 women in Adamawa — with 40 mostly elderly victims released shortly afterwards — the Islamist terror organisation has struck several villages near the town of Mafa in Borno state since last week.
Apparently teenage boys as well as girls have now been taken.
Boko Haram, whose high-profile seizure of hundreds of schoolgirls in April led to the global Bring Back Our Girls campaign, has threatened to sell women as brides in the past — although residents of affected states have now reported that children are also being sent to the front line to fight the Nigerian army.
Last week’s abductions could sound the death-knell for a supposed ceasefire announced by military chiefs on October 17, when the Nigerian government also hinted that the hundreds of schoolgirls taken in the spring would soon be released.
No confirmation of the truce ever came from Boko Haram itself and the group has continued to attack new territory in the country.
Last weekend a multinational force comprising troops from Nigeria and Niger seized the town of Abadam from the Islamists on Lake Chad, which Boko Haram had taken a week earlier. The terror group had killed dozens of civilians and forced hundreds to flee in the interim.
