Kidnapped Girls Located

Nigeria’s military has located nearly 300 schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram but fears using force to try to free them could get them killed, the country’s chief of defence said on Monday.

Air Marshal Alex Barde told demonstrators supporting the much criticized military that Nigerian troops can save the girls. But, he added, “we can’t go and kill our girls in the name of trying to get them back.”

He spoke to thousands of demonstrators who marched on the Defence Ministry headquarters in Abuja, the capital. Many were brought in on buses, indicating it was an organized event.

Asked by reporters where they had found the girls, Barde refused to elaborate.

“We want our girls back. I can tell you we can do it. Our military can do it. But where they are held, can we go with force?” he asked the crowd.

People roared back, “No!”

“If we go with force what will happen?” he asked.

“They will die,” the demonstrators said.

Barde said no one should criticize the military.

“Nobody should come and say the Nigerian military does not know what it is doing. We know what we are doing,” he insisted.

Nigeria’s military and government have faced national and international outrage over their failure to rescue the girls seized by Boko Haram militants from a remote northeastern school six weeks ago. President Goodluck Jonathan was forced this month to accept international help. American planes have been searching for the girls and Canada, Britain, France, Israel and other countries have joined the international effort.

Jonathan’s reluctance to accept help for weeks is seen as unwillingness to have outsiders looking in on what is considered a very corrupt force. Soldiers have told The Associated Press that they are not properly paid, are dumped in dangerous bush with no supplies and that the Boko Haram extremists holding the girls are better equipped than they are.

Some soldiers have said officers enriching themselves off the defence budget have no interest in halting the five-year-old uprising that has killed thousands.

Soldiers near mutiny earlier this month fired on the car of a commanding officer who had come to pay his respects after the death of 12 soldiers. The soldiers were unnecessarily killed by the insurgents in a nighttime ambush, their colleagues said.

The military also is accused of killing thousands of detainees held illegally in their barracks, some by shooting, some by torture and many starved to death or asphyxiated in overcrowded cells.

More than 300 teenagers were abducted from their school in the town of Chibok on April 15. Police say 53 escaped on their own and 276 remain captive.

A Boko Haram video has shown some of the girls reciting Islamic prayers in Arabic and two of them explaining why they had converted from Christianity to Islam in captivity. Unverified reports have indicated two may have died of snake bites, that some have been forced to marry their abductors and that some may have been carried across borders into Chad and Cameroon.

Boko Haram — which means “western education is sinful” — believes western influences have corrupted Nigerian society and want to install an Islamic state under strict sharia law, though the population 170 million people is divided almost equally between Christians and Muslims.