KABUL: (Middle East Press) Boko Haram militants have destroyed an estimated 1,100 schools this year in their stronghold region surrounding Lake Chad, AFP quoted the UN envoy to the area, Toby Lanzer, as saying Monday.
The targeted schools were in Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria, the four countries most affected by the extremist uprising.
Boko Haram is a Hausa-language term that roughly translates into “Western education is forbidden.” The group has been committed scores of attacks on schools and universities in an insurgency that has killed at least 17,000 people since 2009.
The armed group made international headlines in April 2014 when its members kidnapped 276 schoolgirls from a school in Chibok, a town in Borno State, Nigeria. Fifty-three of the school girls escaped but the rest remain missing.
