‘Military Knows Where Kidnapped Girls Are:’ Nigerian Air Chief Marshal

A top official from the Nigerian military said that he knew where the kidnapped girls had been kept. However, according to him, the military is not going to use force for their rescue.

The News Agency of Nigeria quoted Air Chief Marshal Alex Badeh saying that the military would not kill the girls in the name of rescue, CNN reported. "We want our girls back. I can tell you that our military can and will do it, but where they are held, can we go there with force? Nobody should say Nigerian military does not know what it is doing; we can't kill our girls in the name of trying to get them back."

Badeh also said, "The good news for the parents of the girls is that we know where they are, but we cannot tell you. We cannot come and tell you the military secret, just leave us alone, we are working to get the girls back." Meanwhile, Pentagon spokesman Adm. John Kirby said that U.S. officials could not confirm the claim.

Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram kidnapped 276 Nigerian schoolgirls in April 2014. The Islamic terror group has reportedly killed over 1,500 people in 2014 alone. While the group boasted of kidnapping the schoolgirls, it also threatened that the girls would be sold into slavery. The Islamic insurgents, responsible for terrorising the country for over five years, proudly claimed responsibility for kidnapping the schoolgirls. Boko Haram means "Western education is sin." The Islamist militant group declared that it would aim to impose Sharia law more strictly across the most populous country in Africa.

Dozens of kidnapped schoolgirls managed to escape but there are still over 200 girls missing. U.S. officials are, on the other hand, quite sceptical about how capable the Nigerian military is to rescue the kidnapped girls. Apparently the military is poorly trained and infiltrated by sympathisers of the militant group. NBC News quoted a U.S. official saying that there was no confirmation of the location of the kidnapped girls.