Nigerian schoolgirls still not accounted for after Boko Haram attack

Dozens of schoolgirls are still unaccounted for days after suspected Boko Haram fighters attacked their school in northeast Nigeria.

The Yobe state government issued a statement on Thursday that retracted an earlier one that some of the missing girls had been rescued by the military.

"We have now established that the information we relied on to make the statement was not credible. The Yobe state government apologises for that," said Abdullahi Bego, spokesman for Yobe Governor Ibrahim Gaidam.

Late on Wednesday, Bego had said some girls had been "rescued by gallant officers and men of the Nigerian army from the terorrists who abducted them".

Bego did not give a specific number of those saved.

Police said on Wednesday that 111 girls from the state-run boarding school in Dapchi, in Yobe state, were unaccounted for following an attack by the armed group on Monday night.

But exact figures have been difficult to confirm.

On Thursday, parents said 101 children were still missing, The Associated Press reported, while unidentified sources told Reuters 91 were gone.

The students were reported to have fled the attack with their teachers at the sound of gunfire.

More than 20,000 people have been killed and two million others forced to flee their homes in northeastern Nigeria since Boko Haram launched a campaign in 2009 aimed at forming a breakaway state.

Over the years, the armed group has kidnapped thousands of adults and children.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari recently said the era of Boko Haram violence "is gradually drawing to end".

However, the group continues to launch attacks in the country's northeast, and its leader remains at large.

Al Jazeera

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Some missing girls rescued after Boko Haram attack on school

Some of the schoolgirls missing after a militant attack on a boarding school in northern Nigeria have been rescued by the military, officials say.

About 100 children were believed to be missing after pupils and teachers fled into bush outside the town of Dapchi during the attack.

Parents told the BBC they had seen girls being taken away in trucks.

The attack comes four years after Boko Haram kidnapped more than 270 girls from a school in the town of Chibok.

In a statement, the Yobe state government said an unspecified number of girls had been rescued from the "terrorists who abducted them" and were now with the army.

Reuters news agency quoted parents and a government official as saying that 76 girls had been rescued and at least 13 were still missing

Two girls had been found dead, Reuters said, without specifying how they had died.

Yobe state officials had previously said there was no information to suggest any of the girls had been kidnapped.

Dapchi is about 275km (170 miles) north-west of Chibok.

The jihadists entered the town firing guns and letting off explosives, causing students and teachers to flee into the surrounding bush.

Residents say that Nigeria's security forces - backed by military jets - later repelled the attack.

Locals living near the school told the BBC that many of the girls who had fled had been found after hiding in surrounding villages - some up to 30km away.

Yobe's police minister said that 815 of the school's 926 students had later returned to the school.

The minister was speaking before news that more girls had been rescued by the military.

What has happened to the Chibok girls?

Last September, a group of more than 100 of the Chibok girls were reunited with their families at a party in Abuja.

Most of the group were released in May as part of a controversial prisoner swap deal with the Nigerian government that saw five Boko Haram commanders released.

But more than 100 schoolgirls are still being held by Boko Haram, and their whereabouts are unknown.

Boko Haram militants have been fighting a long insurgency in their quest for an Islamic state in northern Nigeria. The conflict is estimated to have killed tens of thousands of people.

The Chibok girls represent a fraction of the women captured by the militant group, which has kidnapped thousands during its eight-year insurgency in northern Nigeria.

BBC

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