Maiduguri, Nigeria is the birthplace of Islamist militant group Boko Haram. While it has had recent success in keeping insurgents outside the city, locals say that beyond the security cordon, Boko's menace remains. WSJ's Patrick McGroarty reports.
ABUJA, Nigeria—At least 63 Nigerian women and girls abducted by Islamist militants last month escaped over the weekend, local vigilante leaders said, offering a rare bit of good news for a region reeling from a spate of kidnappings and attacks.
Militants had abducted the women from near the town in Nigeria's lawless northeast where 276 schoolgirls were kidnapped in April. That larger kidnapping in Chibok sparked global outrage at both the brutality of the Islamic militant sect known as Boko Haram and the Nigerian government's ineffectual response to the insurgency.
The captives who have escaped so far have done so on their own, without help from the military.
The women and girls fled on Sunday after their captors didn't return from an attack on a military and police barracks, said Abb Aji Khali, a local leader of the armed groups that have fought Boko Haram.
A member of the #BringBackOurGirls Abuja campaign group raises her fist during a sit-in protest, a day ahead of the 80th day of the abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls, at the Unity fountain in Abuja Wednesday. Reuters
Fifty militants and six military personnel died in that battle on Friday in the village of Damboa, said Nigerian military spokesman Chris Olukolade.
The captives who escaped on Sunday were abducted in late June and are believed to range in age from school girls to mid-20s.
Their capture was separate from the April kidnapping of 276 school girls, aged 12-15, from their boarding school in the neighboring village of Chibok. Although some of those girls have also managed to escape, more than 200 of them are believed to remain captives of Boko Haram.
President Goodluck Jonathan has said he has launched an unprecedented effort to find the girls, enlisting intelligence assistance from the U.S., U.K. and China. But there has been little visible headway toward a rescue or negotiated release.
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"He has help from all over the world. Why have we not seen some action?" said Pogu Alahamndu, a Chibok native whose stepsister was taken with her classmates in April. "Some of these girls might be pregnant. They might be dead. Only God knows."
Nigeria's government and soldiers "are doing all they can to ensure the girls are rescued alive," said Mr. Olukolade, the military spokesman.
"We are exploring all possible options and we seek support from anybody and everybody willing to help," he said.
But Mohammed Zakariya, an official at the governor's office in Borno, the state that surrounds Chibok and that has been the center of Boko Haram's insurgency, said he saw no sign the military and their foreign partners were making headway against the group.
"We need help. So far we have not seen it," despite the assurances from Nigeria and its foreign partners, Mr. Zakariya said. "They have not found these girls. They have not stopped this thing, Boko Haram."
On June 25, a car bomb was detonated outside an upscale shopping center in the capital Abuja, killing 21 people. A truck bomb detonated on Tuesday in Maiduguri, the biggest city in the northeast, killed at least 17 people. Local officials suspect Boko Haram, which aims to establish a strict Islamic state, was responsible for the bombs.
At a news conference on Wednesday, a group that helped draw attention to the kidnapping of the Chibok schoolgirls decried "the frightening silence from our government on the rescue operation."
"What we have seen, however, is the escalation of persistent attacks on Nigerians with more mass killings, more abductions and mass destruction of property in Chibok, surrounding villages and the rest of the country," said Maryam Uwais, a leader of the group.
