Distraught parents of kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls
"For two weeks, retired teacher Samson Dawah prayed for news of his niece Saratu, who was among more than 230 schoolgirls snatched by Boko Haram militants in the northeastern Nigerian village of Chibok. Then on Monday, the agonising silence was broken. When Dawah called together his extended family members to give an update, he asked that the most elderly not attend, fearing they would not be able to cope with what he had to say. 'We have heard from members of the forest community where they took the girls. They said there had been mass marriages and the girls are being shared out as wives among the Boko Haram militants,' Dawah told his relatives... The April 11 abduction of the girls - students aged between 16 and 18 who were sitting a physics paper at their school, one of a handful in troubled Borno state that had opened specially for final exams - shocked a nation inured to violence during a five-year insurgency. Desperate parents launched their own rescue attempts in the 60,000 square kilometre Sambisa forest where the girls were being held. Security sources said at least three rescue attempts had been scuppered...'It's unbearable. Our wives have grown bitter and cry all day. The abduction of our children and the news of them being married off is like hearing of the return of the slave trade,' said Yakubu Ubalala, whose daughters Kulu and Maimuna are among the disappeared."