AKIPRESS.COM - The Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram has released a video showing some of the schoolgirls they abducted from the northern town of Chibok.

Some 50 girls are shown with a gunman who demands the release of fighters in return for the girls, and says some girls died in air strikes, BBC reports.

The government says it is in touch with the militants behind the video.

A journalist who had contact with Boko Haram has been declared a wanted man by the Nigerian army.

The group is said to be holding more than 200 of the 276 final-year girls it seized from a school in April 2014.

Non-Muslims were forcibly converted to Islam, and it is feared that many of the schoolgirls have been sexually abused and forced into "marriage" by their captors.

Parents of the missing girls have described their anguish at seeing their daughters in captivity.