UK offers spy planes to help Nigeria schoolgirl search

LONDON: Britain has offered Nigeria surveillance aircraft and a military team to help with the search for more than 200 missing schoolgirls abducted a month ago by Boko Haram militants, Prime Minister David Cameron said Wednesday.

"Today I can announce we have offered Nigeria further assistance in terms of surveillance aircraft, a military team to embed with the Nigerian army in their HQ and a team to work with US experts to analyse information on the girls' location," he told parliament.

Specialist teams from the United States, Britain, France and Israel have been sent to help in the search operation, which Nigeria's military has said is concentrated on the Sambisa forest area of Borno state. US surveillance planes have been scouring a vast swathe of northern Nigeria looking for the girls. Boko Haram this week released a video of more than one hundred of the girls, saying they had converted to Islam.