Nigeria: 85 school girls still held by Boko Haram

(Vatican Radio/Agencies) Fourteen more school girls have succeeded in escaping from their kidnappers, the Islamic militant Boko Haram, after the group abducted 129 school girls from their high school in Borno State this week.

Monday's mass abduction of schoolgirls aged 15 to 18 by Boko Haram, who are fighting for a breakaway Islamic state in northern Nigeria, shocked Africa's most populous country.

It also underscored just how powerless Nigeria's military is at protecting civilians despite a year-long state of emergency meant to flush the rebels out of three states in the northeast.

The Islamists attacked Chibok school, in remote Borno state, which had 129 girls staying in it, on Monday. Most of them were abducted, although the precise numbers were not clear.

Borno state education commissioner Inuwa Kubo said in a statement late on Saturday that 16 students had managed to flee back home during the night of the attack, while another 28 had
escaped after being abducted. The other 85 were still missing.

Boko Haram's five-year-old struggle is now seen as the main security threat to Africa's leading energy producer.

Kidnapping girls is a tactic Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is forbidden", began using early last year. It is eerily reminiscent of Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army, which abducted thousands of school-aged girls across central Africa to use as forced "wives" for their commanders.

The kidnapping occurred the same day a bomb blast, also blamed on Boko Haram, killed 75 people on the edge of the capital Abuja, the first attack on the capital in two years.