THE MILITANT group suspected of kidnapping over 200 Nigerian schoolgirls have reportedly abducted 20 more women.
Witnesses say the women were loaded into vans at gunpoint and driven away to an unknown location in Borno state by members of Boko Haram on the nomadic Garkin Fulani settlement on Thursday (June 5).
The Nigerian military, which has faced mounting criticism or failing to stop militant attacks in the north-east, has not commented on the incident.
Boko Haram, which means 'Western education is forbidden', has waged an increasingly bloody rebellion since 2009 in an attempt to create an Islamic state in Nigeria.
The latest incident occurred close to where more than 200 schoolgirls were snatched from the remote Chibok town near the Cameroonian border on April 14.
A member of a local vigilante group set up to resist such attacks said that in addition to the women, the militants also seized three men who had tried to stop the abduction.
"We tried to go after them when the news got to us about three hours later, but the vehicles we have could not go far, and the report came to us a little bit late," Alhaji Tar told the BBC.
Yesterday (June 9), the military announced it had killed 50 insurgents in anti-terrorism operations in recent days and prevented further Islamist raids on villages in Borno and neighbouring Adamawa state.
The UK government is due to host a ministerial meeting about northern Nigeria's security in London on June 12, following on from last month's summit in Paris about tackling Boko Haram.