The United States through Pentagon spokesman, Rear Admiral John Kirby, reportedly admitted that US troops in Nigeria have not found out where the abducted Chibok girls are.
“We don’t have any better idea today than we did before about where these girls are, but there’s been no letup of the effort itself,” Kirby said about the search for the over 200 schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram.
He also said that the US troops had decreased their surveillance flights in Nigeria, but explained that the overall search levels were unchanged due to international involvement, as there are now more flights by other countries including UK and France.
The report insists the U.S is unrelenting in efforts to locate and rescue the girls.
According to Punch,
A US defence official speaking on condition of anonymity said American flights had been reduced only after a body of intelligence had been gathered and that the cuts had been offset by the British and the French support.
Kirby denied a suggestion that US flights over Nigeria had been reduced to accommodate increased US surveillance over Iraq, where Washington is flying unmanned and manned aircraft to gather intelligence about Sunni insurgents.
He said some of the resources that were being used in Nigeria had been diverted from other missions in Africa and could now be used elsewhere on the continent.
Officials declined to say how long heightened U.S. surveillance over Nigeria had lasted.
Asked whether it was just a week or two, the defence official said, “No. We were building this baseline for a good period of time.”
US surveillance flights over Nigeria were now intermittent, the source said.
US military personnel are in Abuja helping to coordinate the effort, and some 80 others were sent to Chad in May to support the surveillance operation.
Chad is northeast of Nigeria and borders the area in which Boko Haram is known to operate.
In the last month, US officials had played down expectations about a swift rescue of the girls and stressed the limitations of intelligence from surveillance flights.
One US official voiced concerns that Boko Haram might have booby-trapped areas where the girls could be held, and there had been reports that they might have been split up into groups that were not being held in one place.
The defence official said surveillance alone would not lead to a resolution. “It will take the Nigerian piece of the equation with their own sources and human intelligence coupled with the other forms to really understand the picture,” he noted.
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