Nigeria's Boko Haram kills aid worker
Boko Haram extremists killed a medical aid worker
held hostage since March, said the Guardian newspaper.
Hauwa Mohammed Liman, 24, was killed by militants
from a faction of Boko Haram after a deadline expired, authorities have said.
Liman, a Nigerian who worked in a hospital supported
by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), was one of three aid
workers kidnapped by extremists during a raid on the town of Rann in the
restive north-eastern Borno state.
A second aid worker, an ICRC midwife, was killed in
September. The surviving hostage worked as a nurse in a centre supported by
Unicef.
Boko Haram, which has also been known as Islamic
State in West Africa, has been waging a deadly campaign in north-eastern
Nigeria for almost a decade.
The militants said in a video posted online last
month that they would kill at least one hostage once a deadline due to elapse
on Monday had passed. It is unclear what demands, if any, the extremists made
for the release of the hostages.
In a video released in recent hours viewed by local
reporters, the militants said Liman deserved to be killed because she had
abandoned Islam by working for the ICRC.
The clip had also referred to Leah Sharibu, a
15-year-old who was one of more than 100 schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram
from a boarding school in Dapchi in February.
While other students were released weeks after the
abduction, Sharibu, the only Christian among them, was held back for refusing
to convert Islam. The militants said the teenager would be kept as a slave.
Nigeria’s military and government have repeatedly
said they are on the point of defeating Boko Haram and its various factions.
However, raids on military bases have continued, inflicting significant
casualties. The death toll from one assault on a Nigerian army post on the
border with Niger last month reached 48. A similar attack was foiled this
weekend, officials said.
Lai Mohammed, the Nigerian information minister,
said the government was “deeply pained” by the latest killing but pledged to
“keep the negotiations open and continue to work to free the innocent women who
remain in the custody of their abductors”.
The presidency tweeted “that the federal government
did all within its powers to save her life”.
