Nigerian Islamists hit town, raze span

French experts join hunt for girls

Women attend a rally calling on the Government to rescue the school girls kidnapped from the Chibok Government secondary school, in Abuja, Nigeria, Saturday May 10, 2014. The president of Nigeria for weeks refused international help to search for more than 300 girls abducted from a school by Islamic extremists, one in a series of missteps that have led to growing international outrage against the government. The waiting has left parents in agony, especially since they fear some of their daughters have been forced into marriage with their abductors for a nominal bride price of $12. Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau called the girls slaves in a video this week and vowed to sell them. "For a good 11 days, our daughters were sitting in one place," said Enoch Mark, the anguished father of two girls abducted from the Chibok Government Girls Secondary School. "They camped them near Chibok, not more than 30 kilometers, and no help in hand. For a good 11 days." (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)
Women attend a rally calling on the Government to rescue the school girls kidnapped from the Chibok Government secondary school, in Abuja, Nigeria, Saturday May 10, 2014. The president of Nigeria for weeks refused international help to search for more than 300 girls abducted from a school by Islamic extremists, one in a series of missteps that have led to growing international outrage against the government. The waiting has left parents in agony, especially since they fear some of their daughters have been forced into marriage with their abductors for a nominal bride price of $12. Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau called the girls slaves in a video this week and vowed to sell them. "For a good 11 days, our daughters were sitting in one place," said Enoch Mark, the anguished father of two girls abducted from the Chibok Government Girls Secondary School. "They camped them near Chibok, not more than 30 kilometers, and no help in hand. For a good 11 days." (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

YOLA, Nigeria -- Islamic extremists blew up a bridge, killed an unknown number of people and abducted the wife and two children of a retired police officer in northeast Nigeria, residents said Saturday amid mounting condemnation of the Nigerian terrorist network that abducted more than 300 schoolgirls nearly a month ago.

News of Friday night's attack came as international efforts to help rescue the 276 missing girls got underway.

A team of French experts arrived Saturday in Nigeria, said an official in President Francois Hollande's office in Paris. They collect intelligence from technical and human sources and image analysis, the official said.

British security experts arrived Friday to join Nigerian and American forces, and Britain said its aim is not only to help in the crisis over the girls but also to defeat Nigeria's homegrown Boko Haram terrorist network.

International anger at the prolonged failure of Nigeria's military to rescue the girls was joined Saturday by U.S. first lady Michelle Obama. In a radio address on the eve of Mother's Day, she said she and President Barack Obama are "outraged and heartbroken" over the April 15 mass abduction.

Michelle Obama said she wanted to use Mother's Day to draw even more attention to the kidnappings.

"This unconscionable act was committed by a terrorist group determined to keep these girls from getting an education -- grown men attempting to snuff out the aspirations of young girls," she said.

"In these girls, Barack and I see our own daughters," Michelle Obama said, referring to Malia, 15, and Sasha, 12. "We see their hopes, their dreams and we can only imagine the anguish their parents are feeling right now."

The waiting has left parents in agony, especially because they fear some of their daughters have been forced into marriage with their abductors for a nominal bride price of $12. Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau called the girls slaves in a video last week and vowed to sell them.

One of the parents, the Rev. Enoch Mark, described his despair and anger at the military for not finding his two abducted daughters. "For a good 11 days, our daughters were sitting in one place," he said. "They camped them near Chibok [the town from which they were abducted], not more than 30 kilometers [18.6 miles], and no help in hand."

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan for weeks refused international help to search for the girls, one in a series of missteps that have led to a growing international outcry against the government.

The U.K. first said it was ready to help in a news release the day after the mass abduction, and made a formal offer of assistance April 18, according to the British Foreign Office. And the U.S. has said its embassy and staff agencies offered help and were in touch with Nigeria "from day one" of the crisis, according to Secretary of State John Kerry.

Yet it was only on Tuesday and Wednesday, almost a month later, that Jonathan accepted help from the U.S., Britain, France and China.

Reuben Abati, one of Jonathan's presidential advisers, denied that Nigeria had turned down offers of help.

"That information cannot be correct," he said. "What John Kerry said is that this is the first time Nigeria is seeking assistance on the issue of the abducted girls."

Kerry has said Nigeria did not welcome U.S. help earlier because it wanted to pursue its own strategy. U.S. Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said Friday that it took "far too long" for Jonathan to accept U.S. offers of aid, and he is holding a hearing this week to examine what happened.

A senior State Department official also said Friday that the U.S. offered help "back in April, more or less right away."

"We didn't go public about it because the consensus was that doing so would make the Nigerians less likely to accept our help," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the issue concerns internal discussions between governments.

The military also has come under criticism on accusations that it ignored warnings of impending attacks, a charge that it has denied.

Chibok government official Bana Lawal said that on April 15, he received a warning via cellphone that about 200 heavily armed militants were on their way to the town.

Lawal warned the 15 soldiers guarding Chibok, who alerted the nearest barracks about 30 miles away, an hour's drive on a dirt road. But help never arrived. The military said its reinforcements ran into an ambush.

The soldiers in Chibok fought but were outmanned and outgunned by the extremists. The extremists then made their way to the Chibok girls school, where they captured dozens of students.

Maj. Gen. Chris Olukolade, a Defense Ministry spokesman, defended the military, saying the major challenge has been that some of the information provided turned out to be misleading.

Bridges Destroyed

In Nigeria's northeast war zone, local government chairman Abawu James Watharda said no one could count the dead because 3,000 survivors fled Friday night's attack on the town of Liman Kara.

Fleeing residents said the insurgents blew up the bridge that links the states of Adamawa and Borno that are under a military state of emergency to halt the Islamic uprising. That would cut off any military vehicles in pursuit.

On Monday, militants destroyed a bridge linking Nigeria to neighboring Chad, where it has hideouts in mountain caves.

There were no details about the latest children to be abducted. The Boko Haram terrorist network has said that its abductions of family members of Nigerian officials is because Nigeria's military and police often detain the spouses and children of wanted suspects, holding them hostage until the suspect surrenders.

Boko Haram has staged many attacks in northeastern Nigeria over the years, a campaign of bombings and massacres that has intensified despite a strong military offensive. Since May 2013, there has been a state of emergency in three northeastern Nigerian states.

Boko Haram has killed more than 1,500 people this year, compared with an estimated 3,600 between 2010 and 2013.

Muslims speak out

Meanwhile, a well-known Nigerian Islamic scholar warned that having foreign soldiers on Nigerian soil could escalate the conflict and draw foreign extremists to the West African nation. Ahmed Mahmud-Gumi, speaking in northern Kaduna city on Friday, said it "may trigger waves of terrorism never seen before."

"Foreign terrorists are eager to engage foreign forces, making Nigeria just another battleground" like Afghanistan and Iraq, he said.

Former Nigerian military ruler Gen. Ibrahim Babangida urged the country's Muslims to rise up against the extremists sullying the name of Islam.

"Islam enjoins you to live peacefully with fellow human beings. ... Therefore, anybody who will come and smear our name, all Muslims should kick against that. Muslims should also do everything possible to stop this continued blackmail against the religion of Islam," he said in an interview Saturday with the BBC Hausa Service.

From Doha, Qatar, the International Union for Muslim Scholars condemned "the terrible crimes offensive to Islam" and said the actions of Boko Haram "are very far from Islamic teachings."

It called on Boko Haram to immediately release the girls, saying that threats to sell them into slavery are against Islamic Shariah law. Boko Haram has said it wants to enforce Shariah law across the entire country, though Nigeria's population of 170 million is divided almost equally between Christians and Muslims. Shariah is applied to varying degrees in most northern states.

The Nigerian extremists also were condemned in online conversations at jihadi forums. "There is no justification for kidnapping girls and children," one member wrote. "Prophet Muhammed prohibited killing women or even scaring them. Do those who carried out this act know that they are defying God's orders?"

The 56-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the world's largest bloc of Islamic countries, said it is mobilizing for a meeting that will focus on groups such as Boko Haram that are part of "the growing phenomenon of dangerous extremist groups who hijacked Islam and are committing crimes in the name of religion."

Secretary-General Iyad Madani said Saturday that the mass abduction was "inhumane and barbaric."

Speaking from the organization's headquarters in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, he said such extremist groups "not only disavow their Islam, but their humanity."

"When an organization kidnaps young schoolgirls and claims that this is Islam and that Allah has ordered this, and when they say they are acting in accordance with Islam in offering these kidnapped girls for sale, how could that relate to Islam, its holy book or any Islamic doctrine?" he said.

The organization faces challenges in presenting a unified Muslim voice, particularly as parts of the Arab world, such as Syria and Iraq, are gripped in a cycle of sectarian violence.

Despite such divisions, Madani said ordinary Muslims feel a shared sense of Islamic identity with one another that supersedes doctrinal orientation. He described Islam as a religion that embraces a diversity of ideas, cultures and people.

"This is the nature of Islam ... which guides the [Organization of Islamic Cooperation] from within," he said. "The roots of the problems are not in how we interpret or understand our Islamic identity," but have to do with politics, economics and governance within nations.

He said sectarian killings and extremist groups such as Boko Haram are a threat to the essence of Islam and to co-existence with non-Muslims who are a part of the culture and civilization of countries where Muslims are the majority.

Information for this article was contributed by Michelle Faul, Ibrahim Abdulaziz, Jamey Keaten, Maamoun Youssef, Godwin Isenyo, Aya Batrawy, Lekan Oyekanmi, Bashir Adigun, Lara Jakes, Darlene Superville and Gregory Katz of The Associated Press; and by Michael D. Shear of The New York Times.

A Section on 05/11/2014

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