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Nigeria media report mass-abduction of girls by Boko Haram or other Islamic militants near northern border
Johannesburg — There were reports emerging Wednesday that Islamic militants had abducted dozens of people near a camp for internally displaced people in northeast Nigeria. Local media outlets said most of the people taken had been staying at the Babban Sansani IDP camp near the town of Ngala, but residents of other IDP camps in the area were also reportedly seized.
Local media outlets said a large group of young girls and some boys were surrounded by armed fighters who then headed back into the surrounding bushland with their captives. The militants reportedly let some elderly people go.
Borno State Police said the attack took place on the afternoon of March 1, but it could not confirm the number of people kidnapped or still missing. Local media outlets reported widely varying figures, saying anywhere from about 50 to 300 people had been taken hostage, but there was no immediate confirmation from Nigerian officials.
The Nigerian Daily Trust newspaper quoted an unnamed source inside the Babba Sansani camp as saying the fighters were from the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram, which has waged a campaign of terror across northern Nigeria for more than a decade. The group was behind the 2014 abduction of more than 200 girls from the town of Chibok.
The French news agency AFP quoted anti-jihadist militia leaders in the area as saying militants from a regional ISIS affiliate, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), had kidnapped at least 47 women in the attack. AFP said Ali Bukar, with the Ngala Local Government Information Unit, had heard the number of abducted could be higher.
The Daily Trust newspaper quoted the source as saying three girls had managed to escape their captors and return to the camp, where they said the militants had taken the group into the bush, close to a village in neighboring Chad.
The abductions come after Borno state Governor Babaganza Zulum said late last year that, while his state had been a “hotbed” for Boko Haram, the security situation “had improved by 85%.” He said no community in Borno was still under the control of the terror group.
Both Boko Haram and ISWAP remain active in the region, and the battle against the groups has left at least 35,000 people dead and driven more than 2 million others from their homes in Borno state alone.
It’s common for people to venture outside the many IDP camps in northern Nigeria to search for firewood, both to sell and for personal use.
BOUREIMA HAMA/AFP via Getty
While not the first mass-abduction since the April 14, 2014 attack at the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, which saw 276 girls taken from their dorm by Boko Haram fighters, if the reports are correct it would be the largest.
Amnesty International has been documenting Boko Haram’s targeting of schools since 2012, two years before the Chibok attack. The organization released a report in 2023 saying Nigerian authorities were failing to protect children, noting that 98 of the Chibok girls were still being held by the militants.
“Since the Chibok school girls were abducted by Boko Haram, a plethora of schools have been targeted, with girls being abducted, raped, killed, or forced into ‘marriages’. The Nigerian authorities, however, have not carried out a single credible investigation into the security failures that left children vulnerable to the atrocities committed by Boko Haram and gunmen.”
Parents of the 98 Chibok girls still missing told Amnesty International they felt abandoned and said the Nigerian government was no longer communicating with them.
Many of the Chibok girls who escaped have returned home with harrowing stories, and most have children conceived during their captivity.
CBS News
As sunscreen misinformation spreads online, dermatologists face real-life impact of online trends
With the holiday weekend in full swing, the anti-sunscreen movement’s recent spike is worrying dermatologists.
“It was not like this before,” Dr. Jeanine Downie, a board-certified dermatologist with her own practice in New Jersey told CBS News Confirmed. “I see easily six patients per week that are anti-sunscreen, where it used to be maybe one every other week or one a month. And now it’s just gotten crazy.”
Downie says in the last two weeks she’s diagnosed three squamous cell and two malignant melanomas, both of which can turn cancerous if not caught early. “And that’s me, just one little dermatologist,” she said.
This movement picked up steam in June, with creators on TikTok telling followers in no uncertain terms “stop wearing sunscreen.” At first, the posts received tens of thousands of views and likes. Dermatologists on the platform then began sharing their own reactions, with those videos gaining even more views. And more recently, influencer Nara Smith went viral sharing an at-home sunscreen recipe to her 8 million followers that dermatologists say does little to protect wearers from sun damage.
Dr. Shereene Idriss, a New York dermatologist who has amassed more than a million followers on her social media channels, is trying to leverage that influence to educate users about sunscreen and sun protection.
“It’s becoming more and more difficult, I think, as a consumer, to try to weed through the noise,” Idriss told CBS News Confirmed.
This misinformation reflects the surprising reality of how some young Americans view sun safety. A study by the Orlando Health Cancer Institute in March found that 1 in 7 adults under the age of 35 say daily sunscreen use is more harmful than direct sun exposure. “I tell my patients, if you want your face to look like a leather bag later, then that’s up to you,” Downie said. About 6.1 million adults are treated each year for basal cell and squamous cell carcinomas according to the CDC. Skin cancer is the most common type of cancer in the country.
“They only want the natural things,” said Downie. “But I tell them all the time, sitting in traffic here in the tri-state area, the level of pollutants in the air on a daily, weekly and monthly basis is significantly more toxic than any chemical they’re going to rub into their skin with sunblock.”
While there’s no evidence that sunscreens are unsafe, the FDA is currently investigating potential concerns. It’s called for more data on 12 ingredients often found in U.S. sunscreen. After conducting its own study into how certain ingredients are absorbed into the bloodstream, the FDA has called for more research into potential health effects on the body.
However, beachgoers on the Jersey Shore this week told CBS News that sun safety is top of mind this summer. CBS News Confirmed looked at Google Search trends and saw terms like “sunscreen” and “what does skin cancer look like” are at an all-time high since tracking began in 2004.
“You know what gets them to start wearing sunblock?” said Downie. “Young kids and young adults, Gen Z, Gen X, they hate pores. And once they hear that they’re going to have big pores that look like potholes, they put that sunblock on.”
The dermatologists CBS Newsspoke with say there is no such thing as a healthy tan. To best protect yourself this summer, they say to use sunscreen and reapply often; wear UPF clothing or UV visors; and avoid being outside during peak UV index between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.
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Reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian won Iran’s runoff presidential election Saturday, besting hard-liner Saeed Jalili by promising to reach out to the West and ease enforcement on the country’s mandatory headscarf law after years of sanctions and protests squeezing the Islamic Republic.
Pezeshkian promised no radical changes to Iran’s Shiite theocracy in his campaign and long has held Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as the final arbiter of all matters of state in the country. But even Pezeshkian’s modest aims will be challenged by an Iranian government still largely held by hard-liners, the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, and Western fears over Tehran enriching uranium to near-weapons-grade levels.
A vote count offered by authorities put Pezeshkian as the winner with 16.3 million votes to Jalili’s 13.5 million in Friday’s election.
Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu via Getty Images
Supporters of Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon and longtime lawmaker, entered the streets of Tehran and other cities before dawn to celebrate as his lead grew over Jalili, a hard-line former nuclear negotiator.
But Pezeshkian’s win still sees Iran at a delicate moment, with tensions high in the Mideast over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, Iran’s advancing nuclear program, and a looming U.S. election that could put any chance of a detente between Tehran and Washington at risk.
The first round of voting June 28 saw the lowest turnout in the history of the Islamic Republic since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iranian officials have long pointed to turnout as a sign of support for the country’s Shiite theocracy, which has been under strain after years of sanctions crushing Iran’s economy, mass demonstrations and intense crackdowns on all dissent.
Government officials up to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei predicted a higher participation rate as voting got underway, with state television airing images of modest lines at some polling centers across the country.
However, online videos purported to show some polls empty while a survey of several dozen sites in the capital, Tehran, saw light traffic amid a heavy security presence on the streets.
The election came amid heightened regional tensions. In April, Iran launched its first-ever direct attack on Israel over the war in Gaza, while militia groups that Tehran arms in the region — such as the Lebanese Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels — are engaged in the fighting and have escalated their attacks.
Iran is also enriching uranium at near weapons-grade levels and maintains a stockpile large enough to build several nuclear weapons, should it choose to do so. And while Khamenei remains the final decision-maker on matters of state, whichever man ends up winning the presidency could bend the country’s foreign policy toward either confrontation or collaboration with the West.
The campaign also repeatedly touched on what would happen if former President Donald Trump, who unilaterally withdrew America from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, won the November election. Iran has held indirect talks with President Joe Biden’s administration, though there’s been no clear movement back toward constraining Tehran’s nuclear program for the lifting of economic sanctions.
More than 61 million Iranians over the age of 18 were eligible to vote, with about 18 million of them between 18 and 30. Voting was to end at 6 p.m. but was extended until midnight to boost participation.
The late President Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a May helicopter crash, was seen as a protégé of Khamenei and a potential successor as supreme leader.
Still, many knew him for his involvement in the mass executions that Iran conducted in 1988, and for his role in the bloody crackdowns on dissent that followed protests over the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman detained by police over allegedly improperly wearing the mandatory headscarf, or hijab.