See the report below:
Recent U.S. surveillance flights over northeastern Nigeria showed what appeared to be large groups of girls held together in remote locations, raising hopes among domestic and foreign officials that they are among the group that Boko Haram abducted from a boarding school in April, U.S. and Nigerian officials said.
The surveillance suggests that at least some of the 219 schoolgirls still held captive haven't been forced into marriage or sex slavery, as had been feared, but instead are
being used as bargaining chips for the release of prisoners.
The U.S. aerial imagery matches what Nigerian officials say they hear from northern Nigerians who have interacted with the Islamist insurgency: that some of Boko
Haram's 'most famous' set of captives are getting special treatment, compared with the
hundreds of other girls the group is
suspected to have kidnapped.
In early July, U.S. surveillance flights over northeastern Nigeria spotted a group of 60 to 70 girls held in an open field, said two U.S. defense officials.
Late last month, they spotted a set of roughly 40 girls in a different field.
When surveillance flights returned, both sets of girls had been moved. U.S. intelligence analysts say they don't have enough information to
confirm whether the two groups of girls they saw are the same, they said.
They also can't say whether those groups included any of the schoolgirls the group has held since April. But U.S. and Nigerian officials said they believe they are indeed those schoolgirls.
"It's unusual to find a large group of young women like that in an open space," said one U.S. defense official. "We're assuming they're
not a rock band of hippies out there
camping."
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