ICC Note:
U.S. State Department Spokeswoman Marie Harf stated Thursday that the U.S. has “been engaged with the Nigerian government in discussions on what we might do to help support their efforts to find and free these young women.” On April 14th, over 100 suspected Boko Haram militants abducted more than 240 school girls from their secondary school in the predominantly Christian town of Chibok, located in Northern Nigeria’s ravaged Borno State. Protests erupted throughout Nigeria, demanding the Nigerian government find and release the more than 230 captive girls who are reportedly being sold into forced marriages with their captors before being ferried to Boko Haram strongholds in Chad and Cameroon.
05/02/2014 Nigeria (ChristianPost) – The United States has offered to help the Nigerian government locate a large number of girls believed to have been abducted by the terrorist group Boko Haram.
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters on Thursday that the US has been and will continue to help Nigeria regarding the mass abduction and overall antiterrorism efforts.
“We have been engaged with the Nigerian government in discussions on what we might do to help support their efforts to find and free these young women,” said Harf.
“We will continue to have those discussions and help in any way we can …We know Boko Haram is active in the area and we have worked very closely with the Nigerian government to build their capacity to fight this threat.”
Harf also stated that “for fiscal year 2012, we provided over $20 million in security assistance to Nigeria.”
“Part of what that does is help professionalize their military, investigate terrorist attacks and enhance their forensics capabilities, and we’ve worked with law enforcement there as well to help build their capacity as well,” said Harf.
For several months, Northern Nigeria has been a source of violent extremism on the part of the Isalmic terrorist group Boko Haram. Churches and Christian neighborhoods have been the chief targets, with several hundreds having been killed. In response to the violence in the north, the Nigerian government sent troops to the area and have made efforts to crack down on Boko Haram and similar organizations.
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