Lagos, Apr 28 (EFE).- The schoolgirls from Chibok are not among the 200 minors freed on Tuesday in the forests of Sambisa, considered to be the bastion of the jihadist Boko Haram group, Nigerian army spokesman Col. Sani Usman reported.

The Nigerian armed forces came to that conclusion after completing the first phase in identifying the 200 girls and 93 women rescued in the military operation mounted in the southern state of Borno.

In the two hours or so since the liberation of the hostages was announced, speculation had been rampant that the students kidnapped from a school in Chibok on April 14, 2014, might be among them, but that has proven not to be the case.

“We can’t confirm if the girls from Chibok – 219 minors kidnapped a year ago – are among those freed,” the army said earlier on its official Twitter account.

Army spokesman Chris Olukolade had said the victims were undergoing an identification process that would determine if these were the girls abducted from the school in the village of Chibok.

Since the Nigerian army launched a joint offensive last Feb. 14 with troops from Cameroon, Chad and Niger, the Nigerian army has racked up some noteworthy successes including the liberation of 60 cities that had been taken by the Islamist group in three northern states.

Boko Haram, which controls large areas of mainly Muslim northern Nigeria, has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, or IS, which has proclaimed a caliphate across large areas of Iraq and Syria.

The army has made a series of announcements in the past about the girls of Chibok, such as a cease-fire agreement made public last October that included the immediate release of the minors, but all of them have proven to be false. EFE