A group of schoolgirls kidnapped last month in Nigeria by the terror group Boko Haram have been released and returned to their hometown of Dapchi, Nigerian presidential aide Garba Shehu told CNN on Wednesday.
Shehu said the girls were being transported to safety and more details would be released later.
Boko Haram militants abducted 110 girls from the Government Girls Science and Technical College in northeast Nigeria in late February.
It was unclear Wednesday how many of the girls had been returned.
The secretary of the school’s parents’ association, Kachalla Bukar, told CNN the girls were seen walking into Dapchi at about 7:30 a.m. local time.
Bukar said he saw around 50 of the girls but had not seen his 14-year-old daughter Aisha, who was taken in the raid.
“The girls said Boko Haram dropped them about 20 kilometers into Dapchi town and told them to find their way,” he said. “I saw about 50 of them but I haven’t seen Aisha, my daughter … parents are rejoicing here, but we can see they have suffered.”
Parents were heading to the town’s Secretariat for a head count and confirmation of numbers, Bukar told CNN.
The mass kidnapping has brought back painful memories of the 2014 Boko Haram kidnapping of nearly 300 girls from a separate Nigerian school, just 170 miles from Dapchi. More than 100 of them still remain in captivity.