Israeli Advisors Join Hunt for Nigeria Schoolgirls
Israel has sent intelligence experts to Nigeria to help search for more than 200 schoolgirls abducted last month by Islamist rebel group Boko Haram, an Israeli official said on Tuesday.
The team, which the official said included people experienced in dealing with hostage situations, will join a growing international effort to track down the children.
“These are not operational troops, they’re there to advise,” the Israeli official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The U.S. military is already flying manned and unmanned surveillance aircraft over Nigeria to look for the girls, whose abduction triggered a worldwide outcry and piled pressure on Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan to deal with the rebels.
Boko Haram has killed thousands of people in its campaign to establish an Islamic state in mostly Muslim northeast Nigeria.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent his team out about a week ago after discussing the situation with Jonathan, the official added.
Israel has defense ties with a number of African countries, and had sold surveillance drones to Nigeria. Last September, Israel sent advisers to Kenya to help in a stand-off with Islamist attackers at a shopping mall in Nairobi.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO