Nigeria abduction video: Schoolgirls 'recognised'

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Relatives and friends of the abducted Nigerian schoolgirls have identified some of them from a video released by Boko Haram Islamist militants.
The footage showed about 130 of more than 200 girls who were kidnapped a month ago from their boarding school in Borno state reciting Koranic verses.
Boko Haram's leader says the captured girls who have not converted to Islam can be swapped for jailed fighters.
Nigeria's government says it is considering all options.
A community leader in Chibok told the BBC that school friends had identified three of the girls in the video.
A mother had also recognised her daughter from the girls who appear in a group wearing hijabs, the chairman of the parents-teachers association at the school told the Reuters news agency
"The video got parents apprehensive again after watching it but the various steps taken by the governments and the coming of the foreign troops is boosting our spirit, even though I have not seen the any one soldier in Chibok yet," Dumoma Mpur said.
The girls' families have said that most of those seized are Christians, although there are a number of Muslims among them.
Two girls on the video singled out for questioning said they were Christians but had converted to Islam. Another said she was Muslim.
Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau said the girls could be exchanged for "our brethren in your prison".
"I swear to almighty Allah, you will not see them again until you release our brothers that you have captured," he said.
Last week, he had threatened to sell the girls into slavery.
Meanwhile, the US has revealed it is flying manned surveillance missions over Nigeria to an effort to find the missing schoolgirls.
A team of about 30 US experts - members of the FBI and defence and state departments - is in Nigeria to help with the search. The UK, France and China also have teams on the ground in Nigeria and an Israeli counter-terrorism team is on its way.
The 27-minute footage was shown to some people in Chibok, the town from where the girls were kidnapped, on Monday evening.
Not all girls are from Chibok itself as pupils from surrounding areas had come to do their final year exams in April as the school in the town was considered relatively safe.
 culled:www.ngrguardiannews.com

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