DHAKA: More than 60 Nigerian girls and women abducted by Islamic extremists two weeks ago have managed to escape.

Nigerian security forces and federal government officials had denied reports of the mass abduction from three villages in the northeast state of Borno on June 22.

The officials said this on Monday ehich reports the Times of India on the next day.

Chibok local government chairman Pogu Bitrus said he had verified that about 60 women and girls escaped on Thursday and Friday by sending a representative who met with some of the escapees and their families at the hospital in Lassa, a town in the neighboring Damboa local government area.

Vigilante leader Abbas Gava in Maiduguri, capital of Borno state, said Sunday that vigilantes in the area told him 63 women and girls escaped Friday while their captors were engaged in a major attack on a military barracks and police headquarters in Damboa town.

Small-scale kidnappings by Boko Haram extremists had been going on for months when they drew international condemnation for the abductions of more than 200 schoolgirls from a school in Chibok town of Borno state on April 15. Some 219 of those girls still are missing.

The government and military failure to rescue them has attracted criticism at home and abroad.

Boko Haram is demanding the release of detained fighters in exchange for the girls. Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan reportedly has refused to consider a prisoner swap.

On Friday the defense ministry reported the arrests of three ’suspected female terrorists’ whom it accused of luring women, especially widows and young girls, by offering Boko Haram fighters as suitors.

BDST: 0918 HRS, JULY 8, 2014