US officials arrive in Nigeria to join effort to locate abducted schoolgirls

American officials have arrived in Nigeria to help look for more than 200 kidnapped schoolgirls.

Fifty-three girls who escaped a mass kidnapping by Islamic militants have been named by the government of a Nigerian state potentially subjecting the girls to stigma in the conservative society.

Some 276 girls remain missing, and US officials and agents are arriving in Nigeria to help the Nigerian government, which has been widely criticised for not doing enough to find the girls.

Reuben Abati, a spokesman for Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, said that the president had met the US ambassador to discuss the US offer of help.

The militant group Boko Haram, which wants to impose Islamic law on Nigeria, abducted more than 300 girls from a boarding school in the northeast town of Chibok on April 15.

The government of Borno state, where Chibok is located, said in a statement today that the 53 girls it identified by name include those who fled the day they were kidnapped and those who escaped from Boko Haram camps days later.

Chibok residents are staging a street protest today to press Borno’s government to do more to find the girls.

Boko Haram has killed more than 1,500 people this year.