As Nigerians and the world community ponder the fate of the more than 230 young women still in the hands of the Boko Haram, SaharaReporters has obtained dramatic photo images of those who got away.
The photographs surfaced three weeks since the mass kidnapping by the Islamist group. There is incredible sadness displayed, with many of those captured in the photos openly weeping, as they publicly re-tell the horrors of the late night raid in mid-April.
As with much of the information about the story of the kidnapping, there are roughly thirty to 50 women depicted in the images. Some are of parents who either are overcome with grief over the fate of their missing daughters, or of relief in reuniting with their loved ones.
The images here were taken in front of the Government Girls’ Secondary School, in Chibok, with the remains of the burned out building seen in the background. As reported by SaharaReporters when this story unfolded, at least 16, to upwards of 50 of the reported 276 students had escaped into the forest, as one of the dozen-odd vehicles driven by the Boko Haram sect had broken down during the kidnapping raid.
The photographs taken three days ago 20 days after the Boko Haram raid, as a whirl of controversy had been generated around the efforts at securing the lives of the abducted students by the Nigerian military forces.
What is depicted here is a kind of public and highly emotional testimony in Chibok that these young women have shared in a dramatic escape they lived to re-tell.
The community in Chibok says the number of missing students is 276. However, in the media the numerical figures have fluctuated, from a low of 210 to 270, by various media outlets. Some media outlets have reported as many as 300 students abducted by the Islamic sect.
These pictures tell a dramatic story of a tiny, and isolated village, Chibok, that the world now has come to know as the site of a mass and disturbing kidnapping.
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