YOLA, Nigeria — The first group of nearly 300 Nigerian girls and women released from Boko Haram were brought by the military to the safety of a refugee camp in the country’s northeast Saturday.
About 680 women and girls were freed last week, as the Nigerian military continues its campaign to push the Islamic terrorists out of their last strongholds in the Sambisa Forest.
As darkness fell in this dusty part of Yola, a convoy of armed vehicles brought the women and young children crammed into the open backs of trucks to a school that has been turned into a refugee camp for people displaced by Boko Haram.
The women had been traveling for three days from the forest where the military says it rescued them from captivity by the terrorists.
Two soldiers were injured when the convoy hit a land mine, said an officer who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.
Looking bewildered, some in shock, the freed women and children lined up for tea and a stew of baobab leaves. Many of the babies had rags for clothes. The military will turn the care of the women and children over to the National Emergency Management Agency.
Lami Musa, 27, was holding her 4-day-old baby. She said she was abducted by Boko Haram five months ago from Lassa village.
“The father of this child was killed by Boko Haram,” Musa said. “I don’t know where my three other children are.”
Many of those arriving will be treated for malaria and malnutrition, said Dr. Mohammed Auwal.
It was not known whether any of the women or girls are the schoolgirls kidnapped from a boarding school in Chibok town a year ago — a mass kidnapping that outraged much of the world.
