PRETORIA, May 12. /ITAR-TASS/. Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram is ready to set free over 200 kidnapped schoolgirls in exchange for arrested militants, a video message from the Islamists says.

The video footage, which has been handed to media, says that all the girls have converted to Islam.

April 14, terrorists from the Boko Haram group took 276 schoolgirls as hostages from a vocational school in Chibok, north-eastern Nigeria. According to the police, 53 children escaped, and 223 remain in the hands of the offenders. Boko Haram explained the attack on the school by saying that “western education should stop, and girls should leave school and marry”.