MAIDUGURI, Nigeria -- Twenty-one of the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram more than two years ago were freed Thursday in a swap for detained leaders of the Islamic extremist group -- the first release since nearly 300 girls were taken captive in a case that provoked international outrage.
The freed girls, most of them carrying babies, were released before dawn and placed in the custody of the Department of State Services, Nigeria's secret intelligence agency. The government "wants the girls to have some rest," said presidential spokesman Garba Shehu, adding that "all of them are very tired."
Some 197 girls remain missing, though some reportedly have died.
"We are extremely delighted and grateful," said the Bring Back Our Girls movement, which campaigned in Nigeria and internationally for the release of the girls, who were seized in April 2014 from their school in the northeastern town of Chibok.
"We thank the federal government and, like Oliver Twist, we ask for more," said Hauwa Biu, an activist in Maiduguri, the capital of northeastern Borno state and the birthplace of Boko Haram.
The release was negotiated between the government and Boko Haram, with the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Swiss government acting as intermediaries, Shehu said. He said negotiations would continue for the release of the other students.
All but three of the girls freed Thursday were carrying babies, said an aid worker who saw them in Maiduguri, where they were flown by helicopter after their release, before being flown to the capital, Abuja. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. Many Boko Haram captives recently freed by military action have been shunned by their communities because they came home pregnant or with babies from the fighters.
Four detained Boko Haram leaders were released Wednesday night in Banki, a town on Nigeria's northeast border with Cameroon, said a military officer familiar with the talks. Just hours later, the girls were released in Banki, at 5:30 a.m. on Thursday, said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to journalists.
But Information Minister Lai Mohammed insisted there was no swap, just "a release, the product of painstaking negotiations and trust on both sides."
At a news conference, he refused to say how the girls were chosen. He said they would be "debriefed" and placed in the care of doctors, psychologists, social workers and trauma experts, and their names would be released after their parents were informed.
In Abuja, Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo welcomed the freed girls, telling them: "The whole nation's been waiting for you," according to a post on the official Twitter account of the Nigerian presidency. He said the girls' parents were on their way to the Nigerian capital to be reunited with them.
A Chibok community leader, Pogu Bitrus, said one parent had called to say the government had contacted him to say his daughter was freed. "We just want all of our girls to come home," he said.
The abduction of 276 schoolgirls from their school in Chibok and the government's failure to quickly free them caused an international outcry and brought Boko Haram, Nigeria's home-grown Islamic extremist group, to the world's attention. Dozens of the girls escaped on their own, but some 197 remain missing.
In May, one of the girls, Amina Ali Nkeki, escaped on her own. She told her family that some of the kidnapped girls had died of illness and that others, like herself, had been married off to fighters and were pregnant or had babies, her mother told the AP. She said her daughter wants to come home with her baby, but has been kept in the custody of the secret service.
"It is hoped that the newly released 21 won't exchange captivity in Sambisa Forest for captivity in an Abuja fortress," said Emmanuel Ogebe, a Washington-based human rights lawyer whose foundation is helping educate some of the escaped Chibok girls in the United States. He said Nkeki "expressed her desire to go home, which the government has refused to respect and comply with."
Former British premier Gordon Brown, who has campaigned for the girls' freedom as the U.N. special envoy for global education, urged Nigeria's government not to give up until every girl is safely home with her family. "We do not know how they will readjust, but one thing is for certain, their lives have changed forever," he said.
The fact that so many of the schoolgirls have children is not surprising; Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau has said he would marry the girls to his fighters and that they should be wives, not going to school. The name Boko Haram means "Western education is forbidden," or "sinful," in the Hausa language of northern Nigeria.
The extremists have attacked many schools and kidnapped many thousands of girls and boys during their seven-year insurgency that has killed more than 20,000 people, according to Amnesty International. In a statement Thursday, Shehu put the death toll at more than 30,000. Some 2.6 million people have been driven from their homes by the insurgency and the United Nations has warned that tens of thousands face famine-like conditions.
Negotiations last year failed when Boko Haram demanded a ransom of $5.2 billion for the girls' freedom, according to a recently published authorized biography of Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari by American historian John Paden. It was not clear if any money changed hands in this swap.
Negotiations may have been complicated by a leadership struggle within Boko Haram, where the Islamic State group has named a new leader to replace Shekau, who insists he is still in charge.
Faul reported from Johannesburg. Associated Press writer Ismail Alfa Abdulrahim contributed to this report from Maiduguri, Nigeria.
