One of the teenagers kidnapped by Boko Haram extremists over two years ago from a boarding school in northeastern Nigeria has been found with a baby and reunited with her mother, a doctor said Wednesday, May 18 — the first of the Chibok girls to be recovered since the mass abduction, the Associated Press reports.
The 19-year-old woman, described by an uncle as traumatized, was found wandering with her baby on Tuesday on the fringes of the remote Sambisa Forest, located near Nigeria's border with Cameroon.
The news gave hope to the families of the 218 girls who are still missing that she may provide information as to their whereabouts. But the young woman told her mother that some of the Chibok girls have died in captivity and the others still are being held, according to her family's doctor, Idriss Danladi, who spoke to The Associated Press after talking with the mother.
On April 14, 2014, Boko Haram stormed and firebombed the Government Girls Secondary School at Chibok and seized 276 girls preparing for science exams. Dozens managed to escape in the first hours, but 219 remained captive.
There were conflicting accounts about how the young woman was found, AP says.
Danladi said the young woman, who was 17 when abducted, was found by hunters and taken with her baby to her home village of Mbalala, near Chibok, to be reunited with her mother. Her father died while she was in captivity, said her uncle, Yakubu Nkeki. All three were then brought to a military camp and arrived under military escort Wednesday night in Maiduguri, the biggest city in the northeast.
But Nigeria's military said it had rescued the young woman and her baby, along with a Boko Haram suspect who claimed to be her husband.
