More than a quarter of the 200 girls abducted from their school in Chibok by Boko Haram are still alive and being kept prisoner in the Lake Chad region of north-eastern Nigeria, according to Persecution.org.

An escapee has told the joint task force assembled to fight Boko Haram that many had been shot or beheaded but some had been forced to marry and convert to Islam. She said about 60 survive in the main camp and more have been moved to border communities. She said she had been raped repeatedly, had become pregnant and had also contracted a sexually transmitted disease.

She had been in a Sambisa forest camp when she escaped from the hands of the abductors and ran into the hands of some Fulani herdsmen. The Fulani herdsmen realised she was a Chibok girl and helped her to the Baga military base of the multi-national Joint Task Force, according to Saturday Vanguard. 

She decided to escape because she was in desperate need of medical help.

She told security agencies that the girls were regularly moved from place to place in the Sambisa forest during the bombardments but that when the heat was too much, they were all moved out.

She also said that Boko Haram terrorists have been seriously weakened and are now moving from place to place aimlessly like lost sheep, planting mines and improvised explosive devices.

"All of us were forced to become Muslims but kept in camps far from each other," she said. "Any of us who refused being Islamised was either beheaded or shot at point blank range."