Three weeks after nearly 300 schoolgirls were kidnapped in Nigeria by an Al Qaeda-trained terror group, the U.S. dispatched a security team to aid in the rescue operation.


“Time is of the essence,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday.

Word that the U.S. is sending military and law enforcement personnel to Nigeria came as President Goodluck Jonathan’s government faces a fierce backlash over its handling of the April 15 mass abductions.

“They’ve accepted our help through a combination of military, law enforcement, and other agencies who are going in, trying to identify where, in fact, these girls might be and provide them help,” President Obama told ABC News, calling the abductions “heartbreaking and outrageous.”

Secretary of State Kerry said that a joint intelligence unit would be set up at the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria and would start work “immediately.”

The terrorist group Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is sinful,” has claimed responsibility for the brazen abductions.

“They’ve been killing people ruthlessly for many years now,” Obama said. “This may be the event that helps to mobilize the entire international community to finally do something against this horrendous organization.”

Carney said the White House was not considering sending armed forces. Roughly 220 girls — some as young as 9 — remain missing. Some 50 others managed to escape.

The plight of the kidnapped girls gained renewed attention Monday when the leader of the group, Abubakar Shekau, threatened to sell off the girls as slaves.

Suspected Boko Haram gunmen on Tuesday reportedly kidnapped eight more girls — ages 12 to 15 — from a village near the terrorist group’s stronghold in the northeast.

In the earlier assault, the armed militants burst into the school in the dead of night, according to a 16-year-old girl who provided the first detailed account of the attack. They herded together the students at the Chibok Government Girls Secondary School, claiming to be soldiers on a rescue mission.

“Don’t worry, we’re soldiers,” recalled the teen who is one of the girls who managed to escape. “Nothing is going to happen to you.”

As the sound of gunfire crackled in the distance, the men ordered the hundreds of frightened schoolgirls to gather outside.

The self-described soldiers went into a storeroom, cleared out all the food and then set it on fire. They “started shouting, ‘Allahu Akhbar,’ (God is great),” the student told The Associated Press. “And we knew.”

The Islamic militants herded the girls onto the backs of three pickup trucks and drove into the night. But then something went wrong. The car of fighters trailing them broke down.

Sensing an opportunity, the girls whispered about making a run for it. “We should go!” one classmate said, according to the 16-year-old.

“They can shoot me if they want, but I don’t know what they are going to do with me otherwise.”

As the girls scampered off the truck bed, the car behind started up. The girls, unaware if the fighters could see them, ran into the bush and hid. “That is how I saved myself. I had no time to be scared. I was just running,” the girl said.

Source: NY Daily News