Monday 05 May 2014 15.40 The Islamist militant group Boko Haram claimed responsibility today for the abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls in northeast Nigeria last month and threatened to "sell them on the market".
On 14 April Boko Haram stormed an all-girl secondary school in the village of Chibok, in Borno state.
The teenagers, who had been taking exams, were forced onto trucks which disappeared into a remote area along the border with Cameroon.
The brazenness and sheer brutality of the school attack shocked Nigerians, who have been growing accustomed to hearing about atrocities in an increasingly bloody five-year-old Islamist insurgency in the north.
"I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market, by Allah," Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau said in the video, according to AFP, which is normally the first media outlet to get hold of Mr Shekau's videos.
It did not immediately give further details.
Boko Haram, now seen as the main security threat to Africa's leading energy producer, is growing bolder and extending its reach.
The kidnapping occurred on the same day as a bomb blast, also blamed on Boko Haram, that killed 75 people on the edge of Abuja and marked the first attack on the capital in two years.
The militants, who say they are fighting to reinstate a mediaeval Islamic caliphate in northern Nigeria, repeated that bomb attack more than two weeks later in almost exactly the same spot, killing 19 people and wounding 34 in the suburb of Nyanya.
The girls' abductions have been hugely embarrassing for the government and threaten to completely overshadow its first hosting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) for Africa on 7-9 May.
Nigerian officials had hoped the event would highlight their country's potential as an investment destination since it became Africa's biggest economy after a GDP recalculation in March.
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan pledged yesterday that the girls would soon be found and released.
However, he also admitted he had no idea where they were.
Meanwhile, a Nigerian woman who led a protest demanding the release of the schoolgirls was arrested today after meeting Nigeria's First Lady Patience Jonathan, activists said.
The first lady's office has denied reports that she ordered the arrest.
The detained woman, Naomi Mutah, was part of a group who met with Ms Jonathan late yesterday to discuss the abduction.
A group called Bring Back Our Girls has organised a series of protests around the country to demand that the government and military do more to rescue the hostages.
Protest organiser Hadiza Bala Usman said that Ms Mutah was arrested at around 3am at the presidential villa because she falsely identified herself as a mother of one of the hostages.
"She was told that she made a false claim of being a mother of the Chibok girls whereas she is not," Ms Usman said.
Ms Mutah, who is from Chibok and helped lead protests in Abuja last week, was in fact representing a group of mothers who could not make it to Abuja for the meeting with Jonathan, according to Ms Usman.
She was arrested "at the request of the first lady," Ms Usman further said.
Police in Abuja have so far refused to comment on the detention.
"The first lady did not order the arrest of anybody and I'm sure of that," Ms Jonathan's spokesman Ayo Adewuyi said.
Claims that Ms Jonathan ordered the arrest have circulated widely on Twitter.
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