At least eight more girls have been kidnapped by fundamentalist militants in Nigeria. From the New York Times:
Unicef said that the second kidnapping involved at least eight girls who were seized by extremists to prevent them from attending school. It called the latest abduction “an outrage and a worsening nightmare for the girls themselves, and for the families of the more than 200 girls who have been stolen from their communities in the last several weeks.”
Najwa Mekki, a spokeswoman for Unicef in New York, said the agency’s staff in Nigeria had been able to confirm the additional abduction in northern Nigeria’s Borno State.
Meanwhile, the United States will send a team to Nigeria to help search for captives. Writes the Wall Street Journal:
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The State Department said details of the team—including its size, composition and duties—will be worked out in a meeting today between Secretary of State John Kerry and President Barack Obama.
Mr. Kerry offered the U.S. team in a phone call Tuesday with Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan. Jennifer Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman, said Mr. Jonathan “welcomed” the U.S. aid offer, but didn’t explicitly say whether he accepted it. Nonetheless, she said Mr. Kerry took the Nigerian leader’s response as a go-ahead to make plans to assemble and send the team.
White House press secretary Jay Carney spoke about the situation this afternoon as well:
