Suspected members of the Boko Haram sect have abducted eight girls from a village near one of their strongholds in northeastern Nigeria.
Police and residents told reporters on Tuesday that the girls were abducted overnight in Warabe village.
The abduction of the girls, aged 12 to 15, follows the kidnapping of more than 200 other schoolgirls in Chibok by the Islamist militant group on April 14.
A resident of the village, Lazarus Musa, told Reuters that armed men had opened fire during the raid.
“They were many, and all of them carried guns. They came in two vehicles painted in army color. They started shooting in our village,” Musa said by telephone from the village in the hilly Gwoza area, Boko Haram’s main base.
A police source, who could not be named, said the girls were taken away on trucks, along with looted livestock and food.
The leader of the sect, Abubakar Shekau, released a video on Monday, claiming responsibility for the abducted Chibok girls, threatening to sell the girls “on the market”.
There were abducted from a Government Girls Secondary School.
The Islamists group say they are fighting for an Islamic state in Nigeria.
“Many people tried to run behind the mountain but when they heard gun shots, they came back,” Musa said. “The Boko Haram men were entering houses, ordering people out of their houses.”
Boko Haram, the main security threat to Africa’s leading energy producer, is growing bolder and appears better armed than ever. April’s mass kidnapping occurred on the day a bomb blast, also claimed by Boko Haram, killed 75 people on the edge of Abuja, the first attack on the capital in two years.
Another bomb in roughly the same place killed 19 people last week, all events that have embarrassed the government before a World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting on Africa in Abuja from May 7-9.
The military’s inability to find the girls in three weeks, has led to protests in the northeast, Abuja and Lagos, the commercial capital. More are expected on Tuesday in Abuja, just as delegates will be collecting their badges to allow them entry to the hotel where the forum will take place.