Pope Francis has just added his name to the list of celebrities calling for Boco Haram to free the 276 kidnapped Nigerian girls using the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag on Twitter reports CNN exclusive: Nigerian girl still afraid - US, UK, France, China helping search for 276 missing girls.
The Pope tweeted Saturday: "Let us all join in prayer for the immediate release of the schoolgirls kidnapped in Nigeria. #BringBackOurGirls."
Prime Minister David Cameron promised Sunday that Britain "will do what we can" to help find the girls, (holding a sign saying) #BringBackOurGirls hashtag on the BBC's "Andrew Marr Show."
I reported Michelle Obama's tweet earlier in the weekend and will replicate it in an update in a few minutes.
Also Saturday, Michelle Obama condemned the "unconscionable" kidnapping of the girls, saying in the weekly White House address that it was the work of "a terrorist group determined to keep these girls from getting an education.
About 50 girls escaped after being loaded onto cargo trucks and are being interviewed on CNN. One said.
"We would rather go than die," one of the girls told CNN. "We ran into the bush. We ran and we ran."
She saw the truck take the rest of the girls into the forest after they were kidnapped on April 14.
Villagers report that they informed police that Boco Haram trucks were on their way that night and local police called for reinforcements but none came. Amnesty International has already made similar allegations.
Earlier this afternoon I reported that U.S. military officials are frustrated that Nigeria has so far refused to accept U.S. offers of drone surveillance aircraft and will only accept a small team of less than 10 military officers in a "coordination cell" and a small F.B.I. investigation unit.
President Goodluck Jonathan has faced strong criticisms and protests in Nigeria for waiting two weeks before seriously looking for the kidnap girls, allegedly to avoid creating a public relations distractions for the World Economic Forum he was hosting in Nigeria's capital city of Abuja.
U.S. Navy Rear Adm John Kirby believes the girls may have been broken up into smaller groups to make a rescue more difficult.
Our sympathies and prayers our with the kidnap girls, their families, and all Nigerians. We join the calls to Bring Our Girls Home.
1:06 PM PT: Michelle Obama calls for return of Nigerian girls on #BringBackOurGirls
Darlene Superville of The Associated Press reports First lady Michelle Obama calls for return of Nigerian girls.
The first lady says on Twitter that, quote, “our prayers are with the missing Nigerian girls and their families.” She also says “it’s time to bring back our girls.”
She packaged her tweet with a photo of herself in the White House holding a white piece of paper with the message “#Bring Back Our Girls” written in black, capital letters.
The tweet was signed “-mo,” indicating that she sent it herself.
In #BringBackOurGirls focuses world's eyes on Nigeria's mass kidnapping Sam Jones, and Emma Howard of The Guardian note the Twitter hashtag has been used more than 1 million times.
Three weeks after 257 girls were snatched from their school in Chibok, a fortnight after #BringBackOurGirls first appeared on Twitter, and a day after Barack Obama described the kidnapping as both heart-breaking and outrageous, the eyes of the world are finally and firmly fixed on events in the remote reaches of north-eastern Nigeria.
The hashtag, which started trending in Nigeria two weeks ago, has now been tweeted more than one million times. It was first used on 23 April at the opening ceremony for a Unesco event honouring the Nigerian city of Port Harcourt as the 2014 World Book Capital City. A Nigerian lawyer in Abuja, Ibrahim M Abdullahi, tweeted the call in a speech by Dr Oby Ezekwesili, vice-president of the World Bank for Africa to "Bring Back the Girls!"
Some of the images posted on the Wear Red Facebook site.
The campaign has reignited the debate over the value of online campaigning or "slacktivism" as it is called by its critics. The hashtag has been used by different organisations to expose the story further online. Amnesty International and Unicef have backed the campaign, as have politicians and celebrities, including Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Wyclef Jean and Chris Brown. Actors Sean Penn, Ashton Kutcher, Justin Timberlake and Bradley Cooper have thrown their weight behind a parallel hashtag: #RealMenDontBuyGirls.
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First Lady Michelle Obama says it best,“our prayers are with the missing Nigerian girls and their families. “It’s time to bring back our girls.”