UK joins hunt for 200 pupils being sold as sex slaves - VIDEO

Foreign Secretary William Hague said the seizure of the children by the extremist Boko Haram gang was ‘disgusting and immoral’.Military chiefs in London are considering sending in the Special Air Service and the Special Boat Service to help search for the schoolgirls, aged 12 to 18.The director Special Forces has told the Foreign Office that UK personnel could support the Nigerian Armed Forces with drones, intelligence, military planning or even join a rescue.However, top brass are reluctant to take part in a raid after the botched SBS mission in which British construction worker Chris McManus, 28, was executed by his Nigerian kidnappers in March 2012.Former prime minister Gordon Brown, now a UN special envoy for education, is travelling to Nigeria to offer support to the government there as it tackles the ‘heinous crime’.He said: ‘We now know that the girls, who are prisoners of the terrorists, are seen as sex slaves to be sold off for child marriage against their will.‘Like millions around the world, I sympathise with the parents whose two-week- long nightmare continues unabated.’He urged the UK and US to take ‘urgent action if we are to prevent the girls being sent into other countries never to be seen again’.The White House branded the kidnapping an ‘outrage and tragedy’ and the State Department said the US would send a ‘co-ordination cell’ including military personnel and law experts to Nigeria.Last month 273 girls were abducted from their boarding school in Chibok in the lawless Borno region in the north of the country.They were taken away in trucks, but about 50 pupils managed to escape.At the weekend, Abubakar Shekau, the leader of Boko Haram – whose name means ‘Western education is forbidden’ – said he would sell the remaining captives as slaves for as little as £7.It then emerged that gun- toting militants had kidnapped another eight girls from the  village of Warabe in Borno.Mr Hague said: ‘We are offering practical help. What has happened here – the actions of Boko Haram in using girls as the spoils of war, the spoils of terrorism – is disgusting, it is immoral; it should show everybody across the world that they should not give any support to such a vile organisation.’He declined to give details of the help that may be offered, but the Prime Minister’s spokesman repeatedly refused to rule out the UK offering  military assistance.Britain is understood to be deploying an Army major and a captain to Nigeria to assess the crisis before any decision is made about military aid.Well-placed sources have said Boko Haram has split the girls into three groups, making a rescue mission increasingly  difficult. Some girls are also reported to have been taken across the border into Chad and Cameroon.Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan is facing growing criticism over the kidnapping and has admitted his security forces still do not know where the girls are being held.(dailymail.co.uk)Bakudaily.az