American spy planes fly over Nigeria in bid to find missing schoolgirls

The U.S has deployed manned surveillance aircraft over Nigeria in a bid to find the schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram, while experts are confident a video of the teenagers released by the militants contains clues that will tell them when and where it was shot.

Washington has sent military, law-enforcement and development experts to Nigeria to help search for the 200-odd missing girls who were kidnapped by the militants from a secondary school in Chibok in remote north-eastern Nigeria on April 14.

‘We have shared commercial satellite imagery with the Nigerians and are flying manned ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) assets over Nigeria with the government’s permission,’ a U.S. official said.

 

She said U.S. teams on the ground ‘are digging in on the search and coordinating closely with the Nigerian government as well as international partners and allies’.

Two U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States was also considering deploying unmanned drone aircraft to aid the search.

One of the U.S. officials told Reuters the United States had been carrying out the manned surveillance flights ‘for a few days’ but did not elaborate.

Last week, U.S. Undersecretary for Africa Linda Thomas-Greenfield told Reuters that Nigeria had requested surveillance and intelligence from the United States. .

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has said he believes the girls are still in Nigeria.
Boko Haram paraded the shell-shocked teenagers on a chilling video, in which the leader, Abubaker Shekau, chuckled and confirmed his prisoners – the vast majority of them Christians – had been forced to convert to Islam. Forensic analysis of the video has begun, with one expert confident that it contains clues that will help focus security services’ search efforts. Grant Fredericks told BBC Radio 4: ‘They [experts] will look at vegetation in the area. That will help to narrow, to a degree, some of the potential locations. They will also be looking at shadows and trying to determine, if they can, when it was recorded. This is done through photogrammetry – it looks at the measurement of the earth and where the shadows would be at certain times.’ He added: ‘A lot will be gleaned from it.’ U.S experts previously determined where an Osama Bin Laden video was shot from studying the rock formations that formed the backdrop to it. They were also able to work out exactly when it was recorded – that was done through a study of the shadows and the geometry of the area. However, it was impossible to fully authenticate the video. Parents were trying to turn on a generator in Chibok, hoping to watch it and identify their daughters, said a town leader, Pogu Bitrus. ‘There’s an atmosphere of hope – hope that these girls are alive, whether they have been forced to convert to Islam or not,’ he told The Associated Press by telephone. ‘We want to be able to say, “These are our girls.”’ The video showed about 100 girls, indicating they may have been broken up into smaller groups as some reports have indicated. Fifty-three girls managed to escape and 276 remain missing, police say. Bitrus said vegetation in the video looked like the Sambisa Forest, some 20 miles (30 kilometers) from Chibok, where the girls were believed to have been spirited away. President Goodluck Jonathan’s acceptance on Sunday.