Boko Haram appears to have released a video purporting to show dozens of the 276 girls who were kidnapped from the Nigerian town of Chibok more than two years ago. The video was released on social media by a Nigerian journalist who is in contact with a faction of Boko Haram that split from the main Islamist militant group after its leader was removed by the Islamic State.
In the video, one girl, identified by the news agency Reuters as Maina Yakubu, makes a plea for help and says that recent Nigerian airstrikes have killed some of the girls.
“Oh you, my people and our parents, you just have to please come to our rescue: We are suffering here, the aircraft has come to bombard us and killed many of us. Some are wounded. Every day we are in pains and suffering, so are our babies. Some of our husbands that we married also are injured, some dead. No one cares for us,” she says, according to the Associated Press.
“Please go and beg the government of Nigeria to release the members of our abductors so that they, too, can free us to let us come home. We are really suffering, there is no food to eat, no good water to drink here.”
