New reports have emerged from the Nigerian State of Borno that Boko Haram has abducted at least 20 women close to where it’s abducted 200 schoolgirls in the northeast of Nigeria close to the Cameroonian border.

Boko Haram on April 14 stormed the town of Chibok and abducted more than 200 schoolgirls which sparked an international outrage with the “Bring Back Our Girls’’ campaign.

But despite effort being made by the international community to free the girls, eyewitnesses on Monday told local reporters that Boko Haram stormed the village of Garkin in Borno State not far from Chibok at dawn and ordered the women onto vans at gunpoint and drove them away to an unknown destination.

The BBC Hausa Service quoted a vigilante man as saying that some men tried to resist the attack but the militants took them together with the women and added that the news got to the vigilante group in the village after the abduction. The vigilante group is a local resistance association set up by the community themselves to defend any attack by Boko Haram.

“We tried to go after them when the news got to us about three hours later, but the vehicles we have could not go far, and the report came to us a little bit late,” the man said.

Boko Haram has stepped up its attacks ever since the abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls. On Monday, the military announced it had killed 50 Boko Haram militants in anti-terrorism operations in recent days but this report is difficult to verify independently by reporters.

Wave of attacks by Boko Haram on villages in recent days beginning from last week is believed to have killed more than 200 people in the remote Gwoza area of Borno state.

The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre and the Norwegian Refugee Council has said that some 3,300 people have been killed by Boko Haram this year alone. Political analysts say this the worse year for Nigeria since Boko Haram began its campaign in 2009.

An international rescue operation is still being carried out by the US and its allies to be able to locate and free the Chibok schoolgirls Boko Haram abducted on April 14.

President Goodluck Jonathan has said that he would use force to eliminate Boko Haram from Nigeria to bring back the peace the country enjoyed previously. But this promise has yielded no results as Boko Haram still attack when and where they like without any resistance from government troops.

Issaka Adams / NationalTurk Africa News

Writer’s Email Address: Adamsisska@googlemail.com

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