US to assist in Nigerian kidnapping

WASHINGTON (AP):

President Barack Obama said the United States will do everything it can to help Nigeria find nearly 300 teenage girls missing since they were kidnapped from school three weeks ago by an Islamist extremist group that has threatened to sell them.

Obama said the immediate priority is finding the girls, but that the Boko Haram group must also be dealt with.

"In the short term, our goal obviously is to help the international community and the Nigerian government, as a team, to do everything we can to recover these young ladies," Obama said in an interview with NBC's 'Today', in some of his first public comments on what he said was a "terrible situation" in the West African nation.

"But we're also going to have to deal with the broader problem of organisations like this that ... can cause such havoc in people's day-to-day lives," Obama said of Boko Haram.

The brazen April 15 abduction has sparked international outrage and mounting demands, including by some in Washington, for Nigeria to spare no effort to find and free the girls before they can be sold into slavery or otherwise harmed.