Nigeria working for release of Chibok girls: minister

The Nigerian government on Sunday said it is doing everything possible to secure the release of the Chibok school girls and put an end to the horrible saga of their abduction.

In reaction to the latest video of some of the girls, the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, said the government is in touch with those purportedly behind the video.

"We are on top of the situation. But we are being extremely careful because the situation has been compounded by the split in the leadership of Boko Haram. We are also being guided by the need to ensure the safety of the girls," he added.

"Since this is not the first time we have been contacted over the issue, we want to be doubly sure that those we are in touch with are who they claim to be," the minister said in a statement made available to Xinhua.

Mohammed expressed the hope that the latest development will signal the beginning of the end of the nightmare to which the girls, their families and all Nigerians have been subjected since the unfortunate abduction.

A faction of Boko Haram militants, which seeks to impose strict Islamic law in northern Nigeria, on Sunday released a new video showing the abducted Chibok girls and claiming that some of the girls were killed by air strikes launched by the Nigerian Air Force on their locations.

The video showed a masked armed man standing in front of several girls, who, he claimed, were the over 200 girls abducted from their school hostel at Government Secondary School, Chibok, in 2014.

The man said the video was released to send a message to the parents of the girls to beg the Nigerian government to release Boko Haram members in various detention centers in exchange for the girls.

The man said about 40 of the girls were already married while some were dead.

Boko Haram has been blamed for some 20,000 deaths and displacing of more than 2.6 million people since 2009. Endit