[ARABNEWS] Days after Nigeria's military raised hopes with the announcement that hard boyz had agreed to a cease-fire, Boko Haram... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality...
still is fighting and there is no word on the fate of 219 schoolgirls held hostage for six months.
Officials had said talks would resume in neighboring Chad this week, but there was no confirmation that those negotiations had resumed by Wednesday.
The official silence raises many questions, especially since Boko Haram's leader Abubakar Shekau has not confirmed that a truce has been agreed.
Relatives of the girls kidnapped from a boarding school in northeastern Chibok town said they are confused but trying to be hopeful.
"Things are still sketchy with lots of holes and varying statements," Allen Manasseh, a brother of one of the missing schoolgirls, said by telephone. Manasseh said he relentlessly scours the news headlines to find out when his sister, Maryam, may return home.
Despite the cease-fire announced by the military on Friday, the holy warriors have attacked two villages and a town in the northeast and raised their flag in a fourth village.
People who escaped this week from Bama, a town in a part of northeastern Nigeria say hundreds of residents are being detained for allegedly breaking the group's strict version of Shariah law.
Residents who got out of Bama said so many people have been detained by Boko Haram that the local jail is overcrowded and houses are being used as makeshift prisons. Many young men have been forced to join Boko Haram, and those who refuse are killed, said those who bravely ran away.
People are jugged
Don't shoot, coppers! I'm comin' out!
after brief "trials" for infringements like smoking cigarettes, said Amina Bukar, a middle-aged woman who said she hiked through the bush for five days before reaching Maiduguri, the Borno state capital 75 km away.
Food is running short since shops have been looted by Boko Haram, said Bukar. "Water also is very scarce, sometimes you line up (at the communal tap) for 24 hours," she said.