Nigeria’s security forces have freed 360 men, women and children from a mountain hideout \u200bwhere they were being held by kidnappers in \u200cBorno state in its northeast, after an intelligence-led operation, the military said this Sunday.<\/p>\n
The government of the West African nation \u200bhas struggled for years to tackle insecurity, ranging \u200bfrom herder-farmer conflicts across its centre to kidnapping \u2060gangs, Islamist militants and community defence militia that operate \u200bacross northern states.<\/p>\n
The abductees were being held by a \u200bgroup known as Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad (JAS) deep in the Mandara mountains in the southern part of the state, the military \u200bsaid in a statement. JAS is the official \u200bArabic name of the main faction of Boko Haram.<\/p>\n
They were captured \u200cfrom \u2060various communities in the area over an unspecified period.<\/p>\n
The rescue operation was carried out by a joint task force that includes special forces, who forced JAS fighters \u200bto abandon their \u200bpositions, the \u2060military said.<\/p>\n
Two children who were in captivity died due to exhaustion and the \u200bimpact of the harsh environment that the \u200bhostages were \u2060held in, the military said.<\/p>\n
The widespread kidnappings and the ever-expanding presence of armed groups across Nigeria Africa’s most \u2060populous \u200bcountry are likely to be key \u200bissues in the run-up to a presidential election in January.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":20633,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[78,26],"class_list":["post-36438","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-featured","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Two children who were in captivity died due to exhaustion.","published_date":"","news_description":"Two children who were in captivity died due to exhaustion.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/36438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/36438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36440,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/36438\/revisions\/36440"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=36438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}