FREEDOM AT LAST: ONE OF THE CHIBOK GIRLS ABDUCTED BY BOKO HARAM IS FREED -POLICE

Freedom for one they say is a stepping stone. one of more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by Islamist Boko Haram rebels in the northeastern Nigerian village of Chibok was freed this week, police and a parent of some of the other missing girls said on Thursday.

"She was found running in a village.

She was in the bush for about four days. She's still receiving medical attention," said a parent, who has two girls still with the insurgents and who declined to be named. He added that she was now in the northeastern city of Yola.

Police spokesman Emmanuel Ojukwu told reporters in Abuja that the 20-year-old woman was discovered on Wednesday, saying she had been "dropped off by suspected Boko Haram militants" at Mubi in Adamawa state, some 100 km (60 miles) from Chibok.

"Her condition is stable," he said, without explaining why she might have been released. The Islamists offered last May a prisoner swap to release the girls, but the proposal was rejected by the government.

A military operation in the northeast has so far failed to quell the rebellion and has triggered reprisal attacks that are increasingly targeting civilians, after they formed vigilante groups to try to help the government flush out the militants.

Boko Haram has seized several towns in the last two months, although the military said on Wednesday it had pushed them back and that 135 fighters had surrendered this week.

It also said Nigerian troops had killed a man posing as Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau in several videos, including one in which he threatened to sell the girls into slavery. The military said last year that Shekau himself might have been killed.

(Reuters)