ABUJA, Nigeria — A report out of Africa states that over 200 of the nearly 700 women and girls that were recently rescued from the Islamic terror group Boko Haram are pregnant, indicating mass rape.

Last week, the Nigerian army rescued hundreds of captured women and children that were found in the Sambisa Forest. On Monday, another 260 that had escaped from the grip of Boko Haram were found near Chalawa Village in Adamawa State.

“Already, many of them are undergoing screening for various diseases [and] infections, including HIV/AIDS,” UNFPA Nigeria executive director Babatunde Oshotimehin told reporters, “and about 214 of those already screened were discovered to be at various stages of pregnancies, some visibly pregnant and some just tested pregnant.”

Borno State Governor Kashim Shettima has expressed concern over the large numbers of women and girls being impregnated by the Islamic terrorist group. He believes that Boko Haram raped the women so as to grow up more followers to carry on the group’s mission.

“Boko Haram insurgents deliberately raped women with the intention of getting them pregnant so they would give birth to future insurgents as successors of their violent struggles, hence the need for a special programm to break the chain anticipated by the insurgents,” spokesperson Isa Gusau said on Monday, according to the Nigerian publication “The Leadership.”

“I [am] very worried about what the future holds for us if what I have gathered about these insurgents works according to their plan,” he continued. “These people (Boko Haram) have a certain spiritual conviction that any child they father will grow to inherit their ideology, whether they live with the children or not.”

Gusau said that many women whose husbands are killed for refusing Boko Haram and/or Islam are kept as sex slaves.

“They also believe that whoever does not hold their ideology is an unbeliever that should be killed and rendered homeless and whatever belongs to him or her becomes a legitimate booty recovered from enemies,” he explained. “This booty includes women that are then allocated to ranking leaders of the sect as sex slaves.”

“The sect leaders make very conscious efforts to impregnate the women; some of them, I am told, even pray before mating, offering supplications for [Allah] to make the products of what they are about doing become children that will inherit their ideology,” Gusau continued.

The government is providing aid to both the women and their babies, including psychological counseling.

“[A]fter establishing the paternity of the children and background of those found to be pregnant, the federal government will have to work with state governments whose citizens are affected, … documenting these kids without getting them stigmatized, monitoring and working towards raising these kids to become educated future leaders without the slightest ideologies of their fathers in order for us to cut the cycle being envisaged,” Gusau said.

None of those rescued over the past week are believed to be among the Chibok girls that have been missing since 2013.

Boko Haram, which being translated means, “Western education is sinful,” has been seeking to build it own caliphate in Northern Africa, a part of the continent that is predominantly Christian. The group has killed thousands since it stepped up its attacks in 2009, often targeting churches and those who are non-Muslim.

As previously reported, last August, after taking over a Nigerian town that is largely inhabited by Christians, leader Abubakar Shekau released a video stating that Muslims were commanded by Allah to rule the world.”

“Allah commands us to rule Gwoza by Islamic law,” he declared. “In fact, he commands us to rule the rest of the world, not only Nigeria, and now we have started.”

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