Nigeria’s freed women and girls get food and medical care

Hundreds of girls and women, many bewildered and traumatised, are being registered, fed and given medical care in their first day out of Nigeria’s war zone. The group of 275 women and children are among the nearly 700 released in the past week by the Nigerian military from Boko Haram extremists and the first to be transported to the safety of a Malkohi refugee camp here in Yola in the country’s northeast. Many critically malnourished babies and children have been put on intravenous drips in the clinic and 21 have been hospitalised for gunshot wounds and fractured limbs, said a camp official.

Based on registration we have carried out so far, none of them is from Chibok.

Zakari Abubakar, Malkohi camp team leader for the National Emergency Management Agency

Almost all are from Gumsuri village near Chibok and which had been attacked many times in the past year, said Abubakar. The women and children were rescued by the military from the Sambisa Forest, the last stronghold of the Islamic extremists, and had to travel for three days on the open backs of military trucks to reach the safety of Malkohi Camp.

Africa