Published 30/04/2015 | 02:30
Some of the nearly 300 girls and women freed
by Nigeria's military from the forest stronghold of Boko Haram were so
transformed by their captivity that they opened fire on their rescuers.
An army spokesman said troops rescued the women and girls while destroying four Boko Haram camps in the Sambisa Forest.
Boko
Haram used some of the women as armed human shields, a first line of
defence who opened fire as the troops approached, according to an
intelligence officer and a soldier who were in Sambisa during the
rescue. The soldiers managed to subdue the women and round them up, said
the men.
The military was flying
in medical and intelligence teams to evaluate the former captives, many
of whom were severely traumatised, said army spokesman Col Sani Usman.
He
said earlier that none of the schoolgirls kidnapped from the
northeastern town of Chibok a year ago initially appeared to be among
the 200 girls and 93 women rescued on Tuesday, but further screening was
needed to make sure.
"The
processing is continuing, it involves a lot of things because most of
them are traumatised and you have got to put them in a psychological
frame of mind to extract information from them," Usman said.
A
counsellor who has treated other women freed from Boko Haram captivity
said some had become indoctrinated into believing the group's Islamic
extremist ideology, while others had established strong emotional
attachments to militants they had been forced to marry.
Some
of the about 90 women and girls freed by the army four months ago, for
example, had upset their community on their return by maintaining that
the militants were good people who had treated them well, said the
counsellor.
"The trauma suffered
by the (abducted) women and girls is truly horrific," said Amnesty
International's Africa director for research and advocacy, Netsanet
Belay. "Some have been repeatedly raped, sold into sexual slavery or
indoctrinated and even forced to fight for Boko Haram."
No
one knows how many captives are in the hands of the Islamic extremists,
who have carried out a campaign of killings and kidnappings that has
seen thousands of girls, women and young men seized. Amnesty
International said at least 2,000 women and girls have been taken by
Boko Haram since the start of 2014.
Irish Independent
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