A Nigerian woman, referred to as Hannah to protect her identity, has told the Daily Mail how she was abducted by Boko Haram militants at the age of 16, held as a sex slave, gang-raped and later strapped with a bomb before making a remarkable escape. Her account offers a rare first-hand insight into the brutal treatment of women captured by the Islamist militant group, which has terrorised north-east Nigeria for years, and highlights the ongoing plight of survivors from the region.

Hannah was seized in November 2013 when Boko Haram fighters stormed her village of Chibok, having unwittingly climbed into a vehicle driven by the militants while trying to flee. She was taken into the bush, where captive women were "married off" to fighters; when she refused to marry her assigned captor, she was starved, beaten, whipped and eventually raped by a group of men after resisting. Days later she was accused of being "stubborn" and had a bomb strapped to her body with orders to become a suicide bomber, before a man from her village, who was among her captors, helped her escape.