The leader of Nigeria's Islamic extremist group Boko Haram has denied agreeing to any cease-fire with the government and stated more than 200 kidnapped schoolgirls all have converted to Islam and been married off. In a new video released late Friday night, Abubakar Shekau dashed hopes for a prisoner exchange to get the girls released. "The issue of the girls is long forgotten because I have long ago married them off," he said, laughing. "In this war, there is no going back," he stated in the video received by The Associated Press in the same way as previous messages. Nigeria's chief of defence staff, Air Chief Marshal Alex Badeh, on Oct. 17 announced that Boko Haram had agreed to an immediate cease-fire to end a 5-year-old insurgency that has killed thousands of people and made hundreds of thousands homeless. Attacks and abductions have continued with the extremists this week seizing Mubi, a town of more than 200,000 people. Fighting also continued Friday in Vimtin, the nearby village where Badeh was born. Boko Haram's kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls taking exams at a boarding school in the remote northeastern town of Chibok in April prompted an international campaign for their release and criticism of Nigeria's government for not acting quickly to free them. Dozens of the girls escaped on their own in the first couple of days, but 219 remain missing. Unconfirmed reports have indicated that the girls have been broken up into several groups and that some may have been carried across borders into Cameroon and Chad. The government had stated it had negotiated with two Boko Haram leaders in Chad, with talks hosted by President Idriss Deby, and that it was confident the girls would be freed soon. But Boko Haram has many factions.
