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Freed B’Haram abductees ‘reunite’ with families

By BBC
20 February 2015   |   3:19 pm
A GROUP of 158 women and children abducted by Boko Haram militants in Yobe State last December have been reunited with their families. They were kidnapped during a raid on Katarko village and spent about a month in captivity. The circumstances of their release are unclear but they were eventually handed over to the state…

A GROUP of 158 women and children abducted by Boko Haram militants in Yobe State last December have been reunited with their families.

They were kidnapped during a raid on Katarko village and spent about a month in captivity.

The circumstances of their release are unclear but they were eventually handed over to the state authorities for counselling and rehabilitation.

Officials said the reunion in the state capital, Damaturu, was jubilant.

In April last year, the Islamist insurgents caused worldwide outrage when they kidnapped more than 200 girls from a boarding school in Chibok, Borno State, which borders Yobe.

The schoolgirls have yet to be rescued despite military assistance from countries such as China, France, the UK and the U.S.

Of the 158 people reunited with their families, 62 were married women and the rest were children, the secretary of Yobe’s State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA), Musa Idi Jidawa,  told the BBC.

He said husbands of 16 of the women had been killed by Boko Haram during the attack.

Muhammdu Katarko said he was very happy to see his two daughters at the reunion on Thursday.

“I had given up when they were kidnapped; my hope was to see even their dead bodies,” he told the BBC Hausa service.

“But fortunately I have now seen them alive, health and hearty.”

One of the abductees, who requested anonymity, told reporters in Damaturu that they were treated humanely by the militants.

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