UPDATED: Hunters help 30 Chibok girls escape

Thirty of the over 200 schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram have escaped, a military source told TheCable on Wednesday morning.

There is yet no official statement on this development but it is expected to be confirmed later in the day.

The source, who said he didn’t want his identity revealed, confirmed that two other Boko Haram captives — a boy and a 10-year-old girl — also escaped.

“All 32 escapees and the hunters who helped them to escape are currently with the soldiers,” he said.

According to the highly placed source, the girls were brought to the soldiers’ camp by the hunters late Tuesday night.

A top Borno State government official said no such information had been communicated to them yet but revealed that nine abducted persons from Kummubza village in Damboa local government recently escaped and have been re-united with their families.

Last Friday, 63 women and girls escaped from captivity when the militants went to engage Nigerian soldiers in a shoot-out at Damboa.

“The information (on Chibok girls’s escape) is not at my disposal,” he said.

A Chibok resident told TheCable on phone: “I also heard that some girls escaped overnight. We are waiting for official confirmation. The whole community is anxious to know if this is true.”

Efforts to get official confirmation were futile, as the military spokesman Major-Gen Chris Olukolade did not reply an SMS sent to his phone while calls to the coordiantor for National Information Centre, Mr. Mike Omeri, were not answered.

A presidential fact-finding committee said last month that 276 female students of Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, were abducted on the night of April 14, 2014 while 57 of them had escaped from captivity and had been re-united with their families.

However, the committee said 219 were yet to be accounted for.