Among the lucky ones, there are pensive smiles but not much
laughter.
When
the militants came to their school, the men shouted “Allahu akbar!” and
announced, “We are Boko Haram,” firing their rifles and threatening
casually to kill the teenage girls studying there.
“They
said: ‘If you want to die, sit down here. We will kill you. If you
don’t want to die, you will enter the trucks,’ ” remembered Kuma Ishaku,
a soft-spoken 18-year-old in a bright white blouse with silver
sparkles. Frightened and crying, the girls boarded the trucks.
But then Ms. Ishaku fled — one of 53 girls from the Chibok Government Girls Secondary School who escaped their captors.
More
than 260 schoolgirls are still missing, and on Wednesday, President
Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria rejected Boko Haram’s demand that he free
the group’s imprisoned members around the country in exchange for the
girls, according to a British minister who met with him.
“There
will be no negotiation with Boko Haram that involves a swap of abducted
schoolgirls for prisoners,” Mark Simmonds, Britain’s top official for
Africa, told reporters in the Nigerian capital, Abuja.
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