A NEW STYLE OF TERROR : Boko Haram kidnaps eight more Nigerian schoolgirls ... France24News

Suspected Boko Haram Islamists abducted at least eight more girls from northern Nigeria on Tuesday, police said, a day after the group claimed responsibility for kidnapping 276 schoolgirls in the region last month, threatening to sell them.

Suspected Boko Haram militiamen kidnapped eight girls from a village near one of their northeastern Nigeria strongholds overnight, police and witnesses said Tuesday, as anger grew over the more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped by the group last month.
The latest abduction, of girls aged 12 to 15, brings to at least 228 the number of girls being held, sold or forced into marriage by the group.
Lazarus Musa, a resident of the village of Warabe, told Reuters that the armed men had opened fire during the raid.
“They were many, and all of them carried guns. They came in two vehicles painted in army colour. They started shooting in our village,” Musa said by telephone from the village, which lies in the hilly area of Gwoza, Boko Haram’s main base.
A police source said the girls were taken away on trucks, along with looted livestock and food.
“Many people tried to run behind the mountain but when they heard gun shots, they came back,” Musa said. “The Boko Haram men were entering houses, ordering people out of their houses.”
The kidnappings by the Islamists, who say they are fighting for an Islamic state in Nigeria, have shocked a country long inured to the violence around the northeast.
'Crimes against humanity'
A total of 276 students were kidnapped on April 14 from their boarding school in Chibok in northern Nigeria. Several managed to escape but at least 220 girls are still being held, according to police.
Many Nigerians have criticised the government for being slow to respond to the abduction. The military’s inability to find the girls in three weeks has led to protests in both Abuja and Lagos, the commercial capital.
More demonstrations are expected on Tuesday in the capital, just as delegates will be collecting their badges to allow them entry to the hotel where the World Economic Forum meeting on Africa will be held from May 7-9.
Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau threatened in a video released to AFP on Monday that he would sell the girls “in the market”.
The UN human rights office warned Tuesday that selling the schoolgirls into slavery may constitute a crime against humanity.
"We warn the perpetrators that there is an absolute prohibition against slavery and sexual slavery in international law," said Rupert Colville, spokesman for UN human rights chief Navi Pillay. "These can, under certain circumstances, constitute crimes against humanity. The girls must be immediately returned, unharmed, to their families."
Boko Haram, the main security threat to Africa’s leading energy producer, is growing bolder and appears better armed than ever. April’s mass kidnapping occurred on the same day a rush-hour bomb blast – also claimed by Boko Haram – killed 75 people on the edge of Abuja, the first attack on the capital in two years.
A car bomb in the same area killed 19 people last week.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP and REUTERS)