MAIDUGURI, Nigeria -- Nigeria's government acknowledged Sunday that 110 girls remain missing nearly a week after Boko Haram militants attacked their town. Frustrated family members already had compiled a list of missing girls after saying officials were being slow to respond.
The fate of the girls is not known, but witnesses said the Islamic extremists specifically asked where the girls' school was located. Some eyewitnesses reported seeing young women taken away at gunpoint.
Many fear the girls were abducted as brides for Boko Haram extremists. The group kidnapped 276 girls from a boarding school in Chibok almost four years ago and forced them to marry their captors.
Many Nigerians were all the more angry that the attack and the events that followed mirrored the 2014 Chibok kidnapping.
That episode grabbed the world's attention and elicited promises from officials that it would never happen again. Nearly four years later, an estimated 112 of the Chibok students are still held hostage.
Information Minister Lai Mohammed made the announcement Sunday after meetings were held with family members and others, some of whom have criticized the government for taking days to make such an announcement.
Confusion has surrounded the events in Dapchi, said Mohammed, because dozens of girls ran into hiding and have been slowly trickling back to the school.
"This is why the whole situation has been hazy," he said.
Officials have been careful to avoid acknowledging anyone was kidnapped in Dapchi. Instead, they say only that the girls are missing.
Witnesses, however, described seeing the girls in militants' vehicles as part of what appeared to be a deliberate plan to steal them. And they said militants arrived at the town looking specifically for the building, a boarding school with about 900 students.
One resident who lives a mile outside Dapchi, who asked that his name not be used because he feared for his safety, said his neighbor was outside his home late in the day Monday when militants pulled up, grabbed him and asked him to point them to the school. He told the fighters he didn't know where it was and begged to be released. They threw him aside and headed toward the town.
Other residents were also abducted by the militants and ordered to direct them to the school before being released, townspeople said.
Fighters arrived at the school about 5:30 p.m., guns blazing.
Hafsat Lawan, 15, said she and classmates heard gunshots in the distance.
"We joked about it" at first, she said, unable to imagine what was about to happen. "But the sound kept coming and getting serious. We then started running."
Some girls began climbing over a fence that lined the perimeter. Militants dragged away those who didn't make it, witnesses said.
The fighters were dressed in army fatigues, but with flip-flops and turbans, another student said. They started telling the terrified girls they were soldiers there to help them, and shepherded them toward their vehicles. In the blur of the moment, some girls believed them, so much so that they desperately scrambled to get into the trucks.
Aisha Ibrahim, another student, said militants beckoned her and her friends to come to them for help.
"But as we came close, I noticed they were not wearing military shoes," and were speaking a local dialect, Ibrahim said.
Ibrahim knew it was unlikely that Nigerian soldiers, who generally are recruited from across the country, would know that language. Her friends didn't realize they were being deceived, she said.
"They kept threatening me to come back to them or they will kill me, but I was courageous enough to run away to join some of my colleagues who were far ahead of me," she said.
Local officials at first indicated that some of those abducted were rescued while others were hiding and would return in the coming days.
Bashir Manzo, whose daughter Fatima is among the missing, said the chances the children are merely hiding in the bush are slim.
"All those that fled into the bush had been brought back to the school on Tuesday, and a roll call was taken after which they had all gone home to meet their parents," he said.
Over the next two days, school officials tried to tally the missing. The effort was complicated by some girls who had fled straight for their parents' farms outside town in areas that have at best a poor cellphone network.
Federal officials did not immediately release a statement. The Yobe state police commissioner told local reporters that there were no casualties in the attacks and no reports of an abduction at the school.
Soon, residents said, military jets began patrolling the skies, terrifying residents who fled local markets and open areas because they feared being mistakenly targeted by the military. Nigerian jets erroneously struck a displaced persons camp in the town of Rann last year, killing dozens of people.
Then, late Wednesday, the state's governor, Ibrahim Gaidam, announced that the missing girls had been rescued.
The next day, parents streamed into the school, expecting to hear news of their missing daughters.
But when Gaidam arrived, he apologized, saying he was mistaken and had relied on security officials whose information had turned out to be false. He told the crowd to view the events as part of God's plan and to pray for the girls' return, said Modu Goniri, a father whose two daughters are still missing.
As he spoke, some parents began wailing uncontrollably. A few fainted. The crowd became furious. Several members tried to attack the governor. Some people threw rocks at his convoy, shattering the windows of vehicles. Police arrested as many as five people -- two of whom are uncles of missing girls, residents said.
NOT AGAIN
"Not even our 112 Chibok Girls would imagine ANY more Daughters of Nigeria would be FAILED AGAIN," Oby Ezekwesili, a founder of the Bring Back Our Girls group that advocates the release of the Chibok students, said on Twitter.
Ezekwesili's group and others have criticized the government for not immediately addressing the Dapchi kidnapping and muddling an already chaotic situation after the attack.
"What people are most angry with," said Dauda Gombe, director of local aid organization the North East Youth Initiative for Development, "is how the government has handled the situation."
Government officials have pointed out that after girls were stolen in Chibok, the administration of Nigeria's president at the time, Goodluck Jonathan, waited more than two weeks to acknowledge the kidnapping, a delay they said allowed militants to flee with the girls. This time, they said, the military has already been deployed and is combing Yobe state, where Dapchi is.
Air Force spokesman Olatokunbo Adesanya said in a press statement Sunday that "the renewed efforts at locating the girls are being conducted in close liaison with other surface security forces."
Nigeria's president said earlier that no effort will be spared to locate them.
"The entire country stands as one with the girls' families, the government and the people of Yobe state. This is a national disaster. We are sorry that this could have happened and share your pain. We pray that our gallant armed forces will locate and safely return your missing family members," President Muhammadu Buhari said last week.
Information for this article was contributed by Haruna Umar, Sam Olukoya and Krista Larson of The Associated Press; and by Jonathan Gopep and Dionne Searcey of The New York Times.
A Section on 02/26/2018