Boko Haram kidnaps 40 boys and young men in northeastern Nigeria

Africa, News January 3, 2015 , by IRIA No Comments

Suspected Boko Haram gunmen have kidnapped 40 boys and young men aged between 10 and 23 in the northeastern Nigerian state Borno. In 2014, the militants abducted about 200 girls from a boarding school in the same state.

Residents fearing another abduction fled the isolated village of Malari and reported the incident on Saturday after arriving in the Borno state capital of Maiduguri.

Boko Haram has been seizing young men in recent months to use as foot soldiers in its bid to form an Islamic state in northern Nigeria, residents said.

Scores of Boko Haram militants are reported to have stormed the village at around 8:00 p.m. local time (1900 GMT) on New Year’s Eve, before taking the missing males into the Sambisa forest, near to the town of Gwoza, which the militants declared as part of their caliphate last June.

“They came in pick-up trucks armed with guns and gathered all the men in the village outside the home of the village chief where they preached to us before singling out 40 of our boys and taking them away,” one resident, Bulama Muhammad, told AFP news agency.