U.S. puts eyes in sky to search for pupils

Borno state Gov. Kashim Shettima (center) on Tuesday addresses demonstrators in Abuja, Nigeria, who were calling on the government to rescue the kidnapped schoolgirls of the Chibok secondary school.
Borno state Gov. Kashim Shettima (center) on Tuesday addresses demonstrators in Abuja, Nigeria, who were calling on the government to rescue the kidnapped schoolgirls of the Chibok secondary school.

The U.S. is conducting manned surveillance flights to search for 276 Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped last month by the Islamist group Boko Haram, a Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday.

Army Gen. David Rodriguez, head of U.S. Africa Command, visited Nigeria's defense headquarters to discuss U.S. support for Nigeria's campaign against Boko Haram militants, who have killed more than 1,500 people this year in bombings, massacres and kidnappings, Nigerian officials said.

He was to meet with U.S. Undersecretary of State Sarah Sewall, Ambassador James Entwistle and senior Nigerian civilian and military officials during the two-day visit, Pentagon spokesman Army Lt. Col. Myles Caggins said Tuesday in an email.

The U.S. reconnaissance mission was being carried out by a manned MC-12 surveillance aircraft, which is based in Niger, according to senior U.S. defense officials in Washington. In addition to the turboprop model, which has seen heavy use in Afghanistan, U.S. officials were also considering the use of drones.

The U.S. operations in Nigeria are part of an effort to locate the schoolgirls, who were abducted in the early hours of April 15 from the town of Chibok in the northeastern state of Borno by Boko Haram, which has conducted a violent campaign since 2009 to impose Islamic law in Africa's top oil producer.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan on Tuesday asked the parliament to extend a year-old state of emergency in three northeastern states where Boko Haram has focused its attacks. The violence has claimed more than 4,000 lives and forced almost half a million people to flee their homes, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group said last month.

The state of emergency, first imposed in May 2013 and extended in December, has been opposed by many northern politicians who argue that it has created hardships for the local population while allowing the military to commit rights abuses even as it fails to curtail the insurgency.

The kidnapping of the schoolgirls intensified criticism of Jonathan after he did not speak publicly about it for almost three weeks.

A Nigerian government official said Tuesday that "all options" were open -- including negotiations or a possible military operation with foreign help -- in the effort to free the schoolgirls.

In a video released Monday, which shows about 130 girls reciting lines from the Quran, Abubakar Shekau, the leader of Boko Haram, demanded the freedom of the group's imprisoned members in exchange for the girls' release.

The staff of the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok and parents of pupils there said Tuesday that they had identified 54 girls in the video, according to Borno state Governor Kashim Shettima.

"These girls have become our property, whatever we wish, we do with them," Shekau said in the video. "These girls remain with us until the Nigerian government releases our brothers and sisters being held in various detention facilities across the country."

He also said the girls, most of whom are Christians, had converted to Islam.

In a previous video, Shekau threatened to sell the girls in "markets" and marry them off, which galvanized a global campaign to free them.

On Tuesday, protesters marched through the streets of the capital, Abuja, to demand more government action to find and free the girls, who are believed to be held in the vast Sambisi forest about 20 miles from Chibok.

A month after the kidnapping, it's now almost impossible to mount a rescue operation, said a U.S. official who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The girls have probably been split up, sold into slavery or taken across Nigeria's borders, the official said. Even if they were still together, a rescue operation against their heavily armed and experienced kidnappers in a remote area would risk killing a substantial number of the hostages, he said.

Enoch Mark, whose daughter was among those abducted, said Tuesday that the authorities should give in to the kidnappers' demands for an exchange.

"The federal government should yield to the request of Boko Haram and release the prisoners in exchange for our daughters," Mark, 47, said by phone from Chibok. "With this development I think the end of Boko Haram has come."

Nigerian authorities haven't released official figures on the number of jailed Boko Haram prisoners. Military spokesman Major-General Chris Olukolade didn't answer calls to his cellphone seeking comment.

Boko Haram on March 14 attacked the Giwa barracks in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, and opened the cells "to release the more than 1,000 detainees, who were arrested under suspicion of being members or sympathizers of Boko Haram," according to Amnesty International.

Boko Haram carried out the school raid after it detonated a car bomb April 14 on the outskirts of Abuja that killed at least 75 people, the city's worst bomb attack.

Nigeria's government said in a statement late Tuesday that the International Criminal Police Organization, or Interpol, has issued a red alert for the arrest of a terror suspect known as Aminu Sadiq Ogwuche, an army deserter who is accused of playing a role in the bombing.

That blast was followed May 1 by another bombing nearby, less than a week before Abuja hosted the World Economic Forum on Africa, a global meeting of about 1,000 executives and politicians.

In addition to the U.S., Britain also is actively involved in the effort to rescue the missing girls. Britain, which has dispatched security experts to Nigeria, said it was also offering "longer-term counterterrorism solutions to prevent such attacks in the future and to defeat Boko Haram."

Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren said the U.S. was coordinating its efforts with other allies in Nigeria. Countries including Israel and Spain also have offered to help.

Information for this article was contributed by Gopal Ratnam, Elisha Bala-Gbogbo, Daniel Magnowski, Gbenga Akingbule, Chris Kay and Yinka Ibukun of Bloomberg News and by Bashir Adigun, Haruna Umar, Lolita C. Baldor, Matthew Lee and Rodney Muhumuza of The Associated Press.

A Section on 05/14/2014

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