The footage is the first time any of the missing girls have been seen since a previous Boko Haram video in May 2014, when about 100 were seen in Islamic dress reciting the Koran.
A total of 276 girls were abducted from the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, northeast Nigeria, on April 14, 2014. Fifty-seven escaped in the immediate aftermath.
Three mothers and a classmate of the 219 schoolgirls still missing confirmed the identities of the girls in the images first broadcast on CNN on Wednesday night.
Borno state governor Kashim Shettima, on a visit to Chibok, where parents of the missing girls held a vigil and said prayers at the school site, said: “The video… is of the Chibok girls. It’s good news.”
A senior government source told AFP it had received the video, which shows the girls in black hijabs, stating their names, that they were abducted from Chibok and saying they were “all well”.
The video was said to have been shot on December 25 last year.
But the source said they were keen to avoid the problems encountered by the previous administration, which prematurely announced talks with Boko Haram elements and even a ceasefire.
“Our intelligence and security authorities… received a similar video in July last year and when they followed the lead it led to a cul-de sac,” he revealed.
Contact could not be made and it was impossible to determine the identities of the purported Boko Haram members who sent it or if the move had the blessing of the group’s leadership, he added.
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