About 234 Nigerian school girls are missing from the northeast Nigerian school attacked last week by Islamic extremists after military misreported the number of missing girls, according to Reuters.
The amount reported on Monday is more than the 85 reported by education officials, but yhe discrepancy in the figures could not immediately be resolved, Reuters reported. The higher figure came out a week after the kidnappings when the Borno state governor Kassim Shettima insisted a military escort take him to the town.
Parents told the governor that officials would not listen to them when they drew up their list of names of missing children and the total reached 234, according to Reuters.
Security officials had warned Governor Shettima that it was too dangerous for him to drive to Chibok, 80 miles from Maiduguri, the Borno state capital and birthplace of the Boko Haram terrorist network blamed for the abductions, Reuter reported.
The Borno state education commission Musa Inuwo Kubo and the principal of the Chibok Government Girls Secondary School had initially said that 129 science students were at the school to write a physics exam when the abductors struck, after midnight on April 14, according to Reuters.
Security sources have said they are in "hot pursuit" of the abductors, but so far they have not rescued any of the girls and young women, aged between 16 and 18, Reuters reported. Parents and other town residents have joined the search for the students in the Sambisa Forest which borders Chibok town and is a known hideout for the militants.
The kidnappings are believed to have been carried out by Nigeria's Islamic extremist rebels, known as Boko Haram, according to Reuters. The nickname means Boko Haram means "Western education is sinful" and is violently campaigning to establish an Islamic Shariah state in Nigeria, whose 170 million people are about half Muslim and half Christian.
Boko Haram has been abducting some girls and young women in attacks on schools, villages and towns but last week's mass kidnapping is unprecedented, Reuters reported. The extremists use the young women as porters, cooks and sex slaves, according to Nigerian officials.
Boko Haram was on a rampage last week, staging four attacks in three days that began with a massive explosion during rush hour at a busy bus station Monday morning in Abuja, the capital in the center of the country, killing at least 75 people and wounded 141, according to Reuters.
Nigeria's military and government had claimed to have the militants on the run and contained in a remote northeast corner on the border with Cameroon, Reuters reported. Extremist attacks have increased in frequency and become ever deadlier this year with more than 1,500 people killed so far, compared to an estimated 3,600 between 2010 and 2013.
