Hundreds of girls still missing

CHIBOK (AP):

A week after Islamic extremists stormed a remote boarding school in northeast Nigeria, more than 200 girls and young women remain missing despite a "hot pursuit" by security forces and an independent search by desperate fathers who headed into a dangerous forest to find their daughters.

At Chibok, the scene of the attack, weeping parents cried on Monday, begging the kidnappers to "have mercy on our daughters", and for the government to rescue them. "I have not seen my dear daughter; she is a good girl," cried Musa Muka, whose 17-year-old Martha was taken away. "We plead with the government to help rescue her and her friends; we pray nothing happens to her."

Although at least 200 remain missing, dozens of the students managed to escape their captors, jumping from the back of an open truck after they were kidnapped in the pre-dawn hours of Tuesday last week or by running away and hiding in the dense forest. The number who escaped depends on whom you speak to, 39, 43, maybe more than 50.

The mass abduction is a major embarrassment for Nigeria's military, which had announced last week that security forces had rescued all but eight of those kidnapped, and then was forced to retract the statement.