US + British Defence Ministry Personnel Arrive Nigeria, Begin Search For Kidnapped Girls

US and British experts have arrived in Nigeria to help in the hunt for more than 200 schoolgirls whose abduction last month by Islamists prompted universal outrage.
The US embassy in Abuja told AFP Friday that a team of American experts had arrived in Nigeria, without specifying the make up of the group…

US officials have previously said Washington would send military personnel as well as specialists from the Justice Department and the FBI to help search for the girls kidnapped by the Boko Haram group on April 14 in the northeastern town of Chibok.

British specialists, including defence ministry personnel, also landed in Nigeria’s capital on Friday, the foreign office said.
France and China have also offered satellite imaging equipment to help find the girls whose kidnapping has drawn condemnation worldwide and raised awareness about the Islamist uprising.
The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) on Friday said that aside from the kidnappings which have captured global attention, focus needed to remain on Boko Haram’s wider insurgency.
“The brutality and frequency of (the group’s) attacks is unprecedented,” UNHCR said in a statement.
Most of the group’s recent violence has been concentrated in the remote northeast, where Boko Haram was founded more than a decade ago, and where more than 1,600 people have already been killed this year.
Attacks in Borno state have at times seemed a weekly occurence this year, with defenceless civilians the most frequent victims.
“Some have witnessed friends or family members being randomly singled out and killed in the streets,” UNHCR said.
“People speak of homes and fields being burned to the ground, with villages completely razed, or grenades being launched into crowded markets killing people and livestock,” the statement added.
Boko Haram has said it is fighting to create a strict Islamic state in Nigeria’s mainly Muslim north.