As violence continues to spread in Nigeria, the Associated Press reports that at least 11 parents of the more than 200 Chibok schoolgirls who went missing have been confirmed dead.
According to the report, the bodies of seven fathers of the abducted girls were brought to a local hospital after an attack by militants in a nearby village earlier this month.
Four other parents have succumbed to stress-related illnesses such as heart failure and high blood pressure, AP notes—conditions that locals insist are due to the horrific kidnappings.
“One father of two of the girls kidnapped just went into a kind of coma and kept repeating the names of his daughters until life left him,” local leader Pogu Bitrus told AP.
Chibok has been all but left in isolation as a result of the constant attacks, and according to the newswire, the radical Islamist group behind the kidnappings, Boko Haram, is closing in on the town as it picks away at villages ever closer to it.
And that is not the only cause for concern. The town is also being threatened with a food shortage as refugees from the targeted villages seek help there.
“There are families that are putting up four and five other families,” Bitrus told AP.
Read more at the New York Post.