ABC News reports: The town where the girls
were kidnapped, Chibok, is cut off by militants, who have been attacking
villages in the region.
Seven fathers of kidnapped girls were among 51
bodies brought to the Chibok hospital after an attack on the nearby village of
Kautakari this month, said a health worker who insisted on anonymity for fear
of reprisals by the extremists.
At least four more parents have died of heart
failure, high blood pressure and other illnesses that the community blames on
trauma due to the mass abduction 100 days ago, said community leader Pogu
Bitrus, who provided their names.
“One father of two of the girls kidnapped just
went into a kind of coma and kept repeating the names of his daughters, until
life left him,” said Bitrus.
President Goodluck Jonathan met Tuesday with
parents of the 219 kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls and some classmates who
managed to escape from Islamic extremists. Jonathan pledged to continue working
to see the girls “are brought out alive,” said his spokesman of the meeting which
press were not permitted to attend. The parents showed no emotion after the
meeting, but some shook hands with the president.
Chibok, the town where the girls were
kidnapped, is cut off because of frequent attacks on the roads that are studded
with burned out vehicles. Commercial flights no longer go into the troubled
area and the government has halted charter flights.
Through numerous phone calls to Chibok and the
surrounding area, The Associated Press has gathered information about the
situation in the town where the students were kidnapped from their school.
More danger is on the horizon.
Boko Haram is closing in on Chibok, attacking
villages ever closer to the town. Villagers who survive the assaults are
swarming into the town, swelling its population and straining resources. A food
crisis looms, along with shortages of money and fuel, said community leader
Bitrus.
On the bright side, some of the young women who
escaped are recovering, said a health worker, who insisted on anonymity because
he feared reprisals from Boko Haram. Girls who had first refused to discuss
their experience, now are talking about it and taking part in therapeutic
singing and drawing — a few drew homes, some painted flowers and one young
woman drew a picture of a soldier with a gun last week.
Girls who said they would never go back to
school now are thinking about how to continue their education, he said.
Counseling is being offered to families of
those abducted and to some of the 57 students who managed to escape in the
first few days, said the health worker. He is among 36 newly trained in grief
and rape counseling, under a program funded by USAID.
All the escapees remain deeply concerned about
their schoolmates who did not get away.
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