Nigerian troops rescued 200 girls and almost 100 women from the terrorist group Boko Haram on Tuesday, but early hopes that the daring mission would locate some of the Chibok schoolgirls who inspired the Bring Back Our Girls movement have already been disappointed.
A spokesman for the Nigerian army told CNN that troops attacked three of the Islamist group's camps in the Sambisa forest in the northeastern part of the country. The raid on these camps comes after weeks of fighting between the army and Boko Haram.
The Bring Back Our Girls campaign (#BringBackOurGirls) was started by Nigerian women after almost 300 girls were kidnapped from a school in the village of Chibok by militants in April 2014, and since their pleas went global, the world has been waiting anxiously for more information about their fates. According to reports from other rescued captives, women and girls kidnapped by Boko Haram face rape, forced marriage, and conscription into the militant army.
On the one-year anniversary of the abduction, newly elected Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari promised to do more to find out what happened, although he admitted that we might never find out the truth. According to a report from Reuters, the women and girls rescued on Tuesday will be screened Wednesday to find out where they first came from.
A cofounder of Bring Back Our Girls told Time that she was thankful that these women and children are safe from harm, and that freeing them only creates momentum for future searches. “We can seize on their rescue to add more pressure on our Government to spare no effort in finding our #ChibokGirls and all other abductees,” she said.
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