Nigeria denies new mass kidnappings

Nigeria's government yesterday denied reports of a mass kidnapping in the country's northeast, as Boko Haram militants flee a four-nation military offensive.

"There is no fresh kidnapping in Damasak," Nigeria's national security spokesman Mike Omeri told AFP, referring to the town recently retaken by forces from neighbouring Chad and Niger.

Reports suggested that the Islamist militants, who seized the town in Borno state earlier this year, made off with hundreds of children as they fled the troops' advance. BBC reported that 'about 500' children were kidnapped citing local sources.

But Omeri said Nigeria had no information about a mass abduction.

The militants do have a track record of mass kidnappings, however, including the high-profile abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls in April last year from the Borno town of Chibok. Details about the kidnapping were muddied for weeks by military and official denials of details reported by the affected families.

The disputes over what actually happened were finally laid to rest when Boko Haram released a video picturing dozens of the hostages, who were subsequently identified by relatives.

Several sources said it was possible, and perhaps even likely, that scores of Boko Haram conscripts were missing, feared kidnapped by the militants across the region.

But they denied a specific mass abduction in Damasak, where the Chadian military last week said that about 100 bodies, some of them decapitated, were found in a mass grave.

A senior intelligence source in Borno's capital Maiduguri said there was "no iota of truth" to the mass abduction claims.