There were indications yesterday that the 230 female students abducted
by Boko Haram terrorists from the Government Girls’ Secondary School,
GGSS, Chibok, Borno State, have been sited at the Sambisa Forest in
Borno State, by the Special Forces of the United States Marines.
This was even as more US military officials arrived Nigeria yesterday to
join local officials in the search while the UK team had earlier
arrived in Abuja to support Nigerian government in its response to the
abduction of over 200 school girls.
Sources told Saturday Vanguard
in Abuja that members of the United States Marines who are already in
Maiduguri following the promise by President Barak Obama to assist
Nigeria in rescuing the abducted girls, located the girls inside the
forest, using some Satellite equipment which combed the forest, located an assembly of the young girls and sent the images back to the Marines on ground in Maiduguri.
Aside locating the whereabouts of the girls in the dense forest, it was
also, further gathered that one of the leaders of terrorist group who
participated in the abduction of the girls was arrested by a combined
team of the US Marines and Nigerian forces.
Sources said that the Boko Haram leader was arrested, through an
advanced interceptor equipment which was used to track the terrorist
while exchanging information with his colleagues in Sambisa Forest about
the movements of American and Nigerian soldiers in Maiduguri.
His phone was subsequently traced to a location in Maiduguri where he was arrested and handed over to the Nigerian military.
The location of the girls in the forest is contrary to widespread
reports that the girls had been distributed and ferried to the Nigerian
border towns in Chad, Cameroon and Niger Republic.
Senator Ahmed Zanna, representing Borno Central District in whose
Maiduguri home, an alleged Boko Haram top commander was once arrested
told the Senate last week that he gave the Military an up-to-date
information on how the girls could be rescued, but lamented that his
information was largely ignored.
He spoke against the backdrop of the claim by the Boko Haram leader,
Sheik Abubakar Shekau, last week that the girls were booties of war, who
would be sold into slavery.