AP, Nigeria :
There’s no dancing in the streets, but people in the hometown of more than 200 kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls are cautiously optimistic about news of a cease-fire with the Islamic extremists who abducted their daughters six months ago.
“We don’t know how true it is until we prove it,” Bana Lawan, chairman of the Chibok Local Government Area, said Saturday. “We will know the negotiations were successful when we see the girls physically. And then we will know it is true. And then we will celebrate.”
Community leader Pogu Bitrus said “people rejoiced, but with caution” after the military announced the cease-fire with the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram on Friday.
Even as the community leaders were speaking by telephone to The Associated Press, Boko Haram fighters were attacking another town in Borno state about 75 miles (120 kilometers) southwest of Chibok.
The militants struck the town of Shaffa first on Friday, the day the military announced the cease-fire, killing at least eight residents, wounding several more and putting hundreds of people to flight, according to residents who escaped.
On Saturday morning, as members of a civilian self-defense group were collecting the bodies of victims, the insurgents struck again. Many were killed, including at least one extremist, residents said.
Several villagers were beheaded in another Boko Haram attack Friday on Abadam, an isolated town on the border with Niger. Among the victims was the septuagenarian father of a local politician, resident Aminu Abdullahi said by telephone.
