Women Rescued From Sambisa Forest Narrate Their Horrific Experience

Hostages who were held by Boko Haram militants in the northern part of Nigeria say some fellow captives were stoned to death as the army approached to rescue them.

The women said Boko Haram fighters started pelting them when they refused to run away as the army came nearer.

A group of nearly 300 women and children was brought out of the vast Sambisa forest to a government camp.

The military says it has rescued more than 700 people in the past week in an offensive against the Islamist group.

The women said several were killed in the stoning, but they did not know how many.


Others were killed inadvertently by the military during the rescue operation, they added.

Soldiers did not realise "in time that we were not the enemies" and some women and children were "run over by their trucks", said survivor Asama Umoru.

The survivors said that when they were initially captured, the militants had killed men and older boys in front of their families before taking women and children into the forest.
Some were forced into marriage.

One woman, Lami Musa, 27, said she had avoided that fate.

"When they realised I was pregnant, they said I was impregnated by an infidel [her husband] and they killed him," she said.

Ms Musa quoted the militants as telling her that "once you deliver in a week's time we will marry you to our commander".

"I delivered at night and we were rescued by the soldiers the following morning," Ms Musa added, in tears.

Other survivors said the militant Islamists never let them out of their sight - not even when they went to the toilet.

"They didn't allow us to move an inch," one of the freed women, Asabe Umaru, told Reuters news agency. "We were kept in one place. We were under bondage."