In northeast Nigeria, it has been reported that 99 people held hostage by the terrorist group Boko Haram have been rescued.
Zagazola Makama, an expert on combating insurgency in the Lake Chad region, stated in a post on his X account that the military conducted operations targeting Boko Haram terrorists hiding in the Sambisa Forest in Borno State.
Makama noted that during the operations, 99 individuals, including 41 women who had been held hostage by Boko Haram, were rescued.
He also mentioned that among those rescued were one of the schoolgirls abducted during Boko Haram’s school raid in 2014, along with two children. Makama expressed concern that the children had suffered from malnutrition and trauma.
Since the early 2000s, Boko Haram has been active in Nigeria, with tens of thousands of people losing their lives in mass violence incidents since 2009.
The organization has also carried out attacks in Cameroon, Chad, and Niger, neighboring countries of Nigeria, since 2015.
In April 2014, Boko Haram raided a boarding school in Chibok, northeast Nigeria’s Borno State, kidnapping 276 schoolgirls.
Following the raid, Amnesty International reported that some of the students had been rescued or managed to escape, while 82 had been held in captivity for a decade.