Dozens of Women, Children Set Free from Boko Haram

At least a dozen kidnapped women and children have been freed from captivity in Nigeria.

Military spokesman Col. Sani Kukasheka Usman released a statement Monday saying the army cleared Boko Haram camps in Borno state in northeastern Nigeria.

Hundreds have been freed so far, but the Islamic terror group continues to use dozens of girls and women in suicide bombings in the area.

More than 1,000 people have been killed since President Muhammadu Buhari was elected in March with a pledge to annihilate Boko Haram. An estimated 20,000 people have been killed in the 6-year-old uprising and some 2.1 million driven from their homes, some across borders.

Earlier this year, troops from Chad and Nigeria drove out jihadists from 25 towns held for months by Boko Haram, which had declared a caliphate aligned with the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

The army succeeded in rescuing a number of hostages this year, but none of the 219 girls abducted in April 2014 from a school in Chibok were among them.

The statement did not specify from where the most recently rescued women and children had been kidnapped or how they were doing.