The ruthless Islamic terrorist behind the kidnapping of hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls is believed to be holed up in abandoned military bunkers deep inside a remote forest eight times larger than Yellowstone and teeming with "wicked and poisonous" snakes. 
 
 The dreaded Sambisa Forest, a game reserve in the northeastern part of the embattled nation, provides bloodthirsty Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau safe haven from Nigeria's security forces, many of whom are said to be afraid to venture into the wooded no man's land. The shadowy leader, his army of jihadist fighters and 276 teenage girls he vowed to sell into slavery or as child brides are believed to have melted into rugged wilderness. The girls are to be sold for as little as $12, according to reports. 
 
 The Nigerian government has reached out to the United States for help in hunting down the terrorists and has offered a $300,000 reward for information leading to Shekau's capture. But catching the continent's most-wanted man will require venturing into the 23,000-square-mile Sambisa, whose dangers have taken on mythical proportions. With confidence in Nigerian authorities completely eroded, local residents have reportedly pooled money for motorcycles to head into the forest in search of the girls missing since last month’s abduction, as well those who have been abducted since. At least two of the girls have died of snakebites, and roughly 20 others are believed to be ill, according to an intermediary. 
 
 Shekau made his evil plans clear in a video released Monday, in which he gloated about the kidnappings. 
 
 "I abducted your girls," Shekau said, in an hour-long video that opens with fighters shooting guns into the air and shouting "Allahu akbar!" "By Allah, I will sell them in the marketplace.” 
 
 Shekau's army is estimated to number from a few hundred to a few thousand fighters. The U.S. has offered to send a team to Nigeria to help the search efforts. A senior federal law enforcement source told Fox News that although the FBI has a permanent presence in Lagos, Nigeria, it’s "still unclear, what, if any” supplemental resources are being provided by the FBI. The FBI's elite Hostage Rescue Team is not in play at this time, the source said. 
 
 The forest's thorny vegetation is 6 feet high in some places, impenetrable without the use of heavy cutlasses to chop trails. According to locals, the wilderness was a primary grazing grounds for stray elephants from central Africa as a game reserve before 2006. It’s now believed that Boko Haram could be hiding in bunkers here previously used by the military to protect the indigenous residents of the region. 
 
 In recent days, Boko Haram has raided villages in and around the forest, including a raid Monday night on a village near the border with Chad, in which eight more girls were kidnapped. 
 
 Umar Maryah, a professor at Nigeria’s University of Maiduguri, told The Guardian that the forest hosts a large population of wildlife, including giant crustaceans, monkeys, antelopes, lions, elephants and ostriches. 
 
 Boko Haram militants are reportedly well-versed on the enormous forest and would likely see any military approach long in advance. 
 
 “It actually took the intelligence services a long time to discover that the game reserve had become a hideout for the sect,” one source told The Nation. “They waited three years until several lives had been lost before acting reluctantly on the intelligence advises … As a matter of fact, Sambisa is not the only hideout of the insurgents.” 
 
 The young hostages will be tactically transported from one base to another, typically during the cover of nightfall, to avoid detection, the source added. 
 
 Meanwhile, little is known about the group’s notoriously vicious leader. Shekau -- who is believed to be as young as 36 or as old as 45 -- was reportedly Boko Haram’s deputy leader until its founder, Mohammed Yusuf, was killed in a massive crackdown by local authorities in 2009. Shekau was initially thought to have also been killed during those attacks, but he later surfaced in a video claiming to be the terror group’s new director. 
 
 The U.S. Department of State is offering a reward of up to $7 million for information leading to Shekau’s location. In 2012, he was declared as a “specially designated global terrorist” for numerous bombings, including the August 2011 attack on the UN office complex in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, that killed 23 people and injured dozens more. 
 
 Shekau, according to a BBC profile, is known as a “fearless loner” with a photographic memory, a complex and often paradoxical man whom is part intellectual, part terrorist. His nickname — Darul Tawheed — translates as a specialist in Tawheed, or the concept of monotheism in Islam. 
 
 “He hardly talks,” one journalist, Ahmed Salkida, told BBC. “He is fearless … He is one of those who believes that you can sacrifice anything for your belief.” 
 
 Shekau does not speak English, but is fluent in his native Kanuri, Hausa and Arabic languages. He reportedly does not even communicate directly with the group’s soldiers. 
 
 “A lot of those calling themselves leaders in the group do not even have contact with him,” Salkida told BBC. 
 
 Shekau, according to those who study the group, is known for being particularly brutal. 
 
 “I enjoy killing anyone that God commands me to kill — the way I enjoy killing chickens and rams,” he said in a clip released in 2012 after an attack in Kano, Nigeria, that killed more than 180 people. 
 
 In addition to being the group’s militant leader, Shekau also serves as its spiritual leader, Salkida said. 
 
 “He has a photographic memory and is well versed in theology,” he told BBC. 
 
 Meanwhile, on Wednesday, as many as 300 people were killed when extremists attacked the town of Gamboru Ngala on Nigeria's border with Cameroon, according to local reports. The attack and hundreds of casualties were confirmed Wednesday by Borno state information commissioner Mohammed Bulama who spoke to The Associated Press by telephone Wednesday. Shops and homes were set ablaze and razed in the attack, he said. 
 
 Nigerian federal Senator Ahmed Zannah said the attack lasted about 12 hours, according to the newspaper. The insurgents set homes on fire and gunned down residents who tried to escape from the flames. Zannah blamed fighters of Nigeria's homegrown Boko Haram terrorist network that has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of 276 teenage girls and is threatening to sell them into slavery. 
 
 Boko Haram's five-year-old Islamic uprising has claimed the lives of thousands of Muslims and Christians. More than 1,500 people have died in their attacks so far this year. The insurgents say Western influences are corrupting and they want to impose an Islamic state in Nigeria, a country of 170 million where half the population is Christian, The Associated Press reports. ||||| Not many Nigerians know much about the Sambisa Forest. Our Maiduguri Correspondent, Bodunrin Kayode, in Maiduguri gives readers a glimpse of this mysterious forest which was once a game reserve. 
 
 AMBISA Forest. 
 
 Perhaps a few weeks or month, back the name Sambisa Forest meant nothing to many Nigerians. Not anymore. It has come to signify terror and home to the terrorist group Boko Haram. The forest is now a myth for so many people within the Lake Chad basin who have come to align the complex north eastern vegetation to the home of Boko Haram instead of the game reserve the colonialist meant it for. The colonial government had marked the forest out as a game reserve! 
 
 Today, Sambisa has become one of the strongest bases of the Boko Haram insurgents who run back into its dark recesses anytime they have finished their slaughter of harmless citizens. Others in this part of the country rightly associate it with wicked and poisonous reptiles such as loud hissing rattle snakes and giant crustaceans crawling underneath the forest vegetation which is not more than sometimes 1.5metres in some areas while some areas could be as high as two metres depending on the size of the shrubs growing in that section. 
 
 Homes to wild animals 
 
 To Mohammed Bagoni, it is a forest where elephants used to stray in from Central Africa through some game reserve corridors. According to him, he remembers seeing those mighty beasts in the forest as a kid when his uncle worked inside the reserve while it was under the state government. The thick skin of elephants and camels make the animals to be immune to the characteristic thorns of the Sambisa Forest vegetation which is why they can go through unhurt even feeding on the very thorns which the uninitiated mortals fear and which makes them call the place a forest. For many young people who have never travelled beyond Damaturu, Sambisa is the only forest they have seen in their life time. Apart from these patches of forests the north is generally a vast land where one can drive endlessly without seeing much vegetation. 
 
 For so many young people outside the savannah, it is indeed very strange to find a ‘forest’ in the middle of the savannah vegetation. How would a ‘forest’ be found in the north eastern axis of Nigeria? Are they not living in a desert full of sand from the great Sahara which has encroached badly from the receding Lake Chad region due to global warming? 
 
 The question many ask no one in particular is: Why the Sambisa forest still remains intact as a game reserve when many other green zones in the Sahel have been overtaken by global warming? What is it that makes Sambisa tick so much that the insurgents tormenting people of the north east have taken solace inside? Is it so dark underneath the vegetation cover that it can hide massive boa constrictors which can swallow a whole human who dare to hunt inside like we hear in the tropical rain forests of southern Nigeria? Is there any mystic charm or juju associated with the Sambisa? 
 
 To some people in Maiduguri, the Sambisa is a real forest game reserve located not far from the state capital. From about 14 kilometers off Kawuri Village, along Maiduguri – Bama Road you will begin to see signs that you are close to the lowest thorny bushes of the reserve some as low as half a metre. It is not the typical forest one sees along some southern states which could be as high as a hundred metres creating a primary, secondary and tertiary scenario but a single dimensional forest which is visible driving through the main road that connects Maiduguri, Konduga and Barma. Actually it also graduates from as low as half a metre trees to the extremely thick areas where human skins cannot penetrate without being hurt by thorns if you do not have a cutlass or something to ward them off. That is the nature of the forest which is being manipulated and controlled by Boko Haram who have become masters of the savannah. A few people liken the ferocious sect to the animals who hitherto lived in the game reserve! 
 
 According to Professor Umar Maryah of University of Maiduguri, the forest covers an area stretching approximately 60,000 square kilometers across the north east from Borno, Yobe, Gombe, Bauchi states along the Darazo corridor, Jigawa and right up to some parts of Kano State in the far north. 
 
 It harbours a sizable population of wildlife, typical of savannah habitats worldwide and a conducive environment for animals such as monkeys, antelopes, lions, elephants, as well as bird species such as Ostrich, Bustard and a lot of those migrating species.There is no Sambisa without the sustaining Game Reserve for hunters and farmers. This means that a lot of animals in the Sambisa reserve contribute to making the land very fertile for farmers in the surrounding villages to make big harvest from the land. The forest reserve has been handed to the Federal Government through the National Park. 
 
 To the south of the Sambisa is Askira local government area, to the south west is Danboa while to the west is Konduga and Jere local government areas. The reserve got its name from a village called Sambisa bordering the Gwozo axis of the area. 
 
 On the eastern flank of the Sambisa is Gwoza Local Government Area which is also a notorious hide out for the Boko Haram insurgents. The Gwoza Hills, with heights of about 1300 meters above sea level provides scenery and is made up of ranges of mountains known as the Mandara Mountains. These Mountains form a natural barrier between Nigeria and Republic of the Cameroun, starting from Pulka. They over look the game reserves by meandering towards Mubi and beyond in Adamawa State. They equally have a connection with the Mambilla Mountain which is also home to the Gashaka Game Reserve at its foot, which is also a corridor connected to the Sambisa Game Reserve. 
 
 According to a source in the Borno State department for urban planning, “The Mountains around Gwoza have several streams, ponds, springs dotting out into settlements by various tribes including the Gwozas. This mountain has varieties of attractive animal species which can be spotted when they are grazing. They graze mostly in the mornings, afternoons and evenings including nights for night breeding species.” 
 
 Professor Maryah of the Geography Department of the University of Maiduguri said lots of villages surround the Sambisa making it conducive for farming which is practised by the people who are at the fringes of the Sambisa. The Sambisa village by the reserve has tribes like the Gamarabu, Margis also found in Gwoza and the Fulani who use the area as a grazing reserve. They live a lot on fruits and stem crops such as sugar cane and date palms which are very common in the Sambisa forest. No wonder date palm called ‘debino’ in Hausa has become a major fruit which is served to new initiates who agree to join the sect to fight propagators of western education. 
 
 Vegetables such as spinach, onions and tomatoes are equally common in the place while grains such as wheat, sorghum, rice and millet are also present in the place. There are also root crops and nuts which are grown by locals and taken to Maiduguri and Banki in Cameroun. These include groundnuts, cow peas, sweet potatoes and cassava. For the area around Jere Local Government Area, they equally farm Irish potatoes which is a common delicacy in Borno even in the markets of the insurgents in the Sambisa. Gum Arabic which is grown all over the savannah is equally very common in the Sambisa. It has become a major crop grown by the people along the corridor. 
 
 Master of the environment 
 
 Members of Boko Haram are well knowledgeable about the enormous endowment of the Sambisa Forest and have capitalised on the fact that even if military tanks must be moved into the place to dislodge them, it must be done with knowledge and tactics. 
 
 For now the people living along the Sambisa corridor are very careful while some of them have left their villages for Cameroun and Niger thus making the new landlords – Boko Haram- calling the shots. 
 
 “As a matter of fact, Sambisa is not the only hideout of the insurgents, it is just that before the kill and run antics of the Boko Haram, nobody will expect that some human beings will be hibernating with a bunch of blood thirsty occultist Nigerians and their foreign collaborators in there. 
 
 “Those who are still there are at the beck and call of the Boko Haram just like the teenagers of Government Secondary School, Chibok who have now become the latest sex slaves of the insurgents. To produce children that will finally be initiated into their cults. The girls will be moved tactically from one base to another mostly in the night so that they cannot recognize where they were. They will finally end up in Sambisa or Algoni, the two most dreaded bases remaining for the managers of the nation’s security to bring down 
 
 “It actually took the intelligence services a long time to discover that the game reserve had become a hideout for the sect. They waited three years until several lives had been lost before acting reluctantly on the intelligence advises.” 
 
 The source added, “We in the intelligence were ready to penetrate the sect but they (the government) wasted too much time concentrating on irrelevances. Now it is too late, the intelligence guys are not ready to risk their lives any more after all the frustration from the managers in Abuja. We have given them all the information they need including the level of sophistication of the insurgents; it’s up to them to act.” 
 
 The Sambisa Forest lost its innocence as a game reserve before 2006. The forest is believed to have super bunkers underneath the Sahel so that the new tenants (Boko Haram) will be well placed to complete their aim of taking over all the government houses in the north east after bringing down the few military installations created years back to protect the people of this region. 
 
 The forest in many ways looks like the forest created by the Yoruba novelist D.O. Fagunwa in his novels. The question is: who will take the veil and the shrubs off the face of this forest of a thousand myths?
– Boko Haram has a tactical advantage: The Muslim extremist group suspected of kidnapping Nigerian girls is hiding out in old military bunkers, in an enormous forest where vegetation grows as high as six feet, Fox News reports. What's more, the 23,000-square-mile Sambisa Forest is teeming with poisonous snakes (two girls have apparently died of snakebites, and 20 are ill) and hosts varied wildlife including monkeys, antelopes, and lions, reports the Guardian. The wilderness was once a grazing grounds for elephants, whose thick skin could tolerate the thorny vegetation—but without cutlasses, it can be impenetrable to human visitors. "It actually took the intelligence services a long time to discover that the game reserve had become a hideout for the sect," a source tells the Nation. Only after three years and the loss of "several lives" did services come around, but now agents "are not ready to risk their lives any more after all the frustration." National police offered a $300,000 reward today for information leading to the girls' rescue, and the US has sent a team to help, but the Guardian notes that even the use of tanks wouldn't give authorities a clear tactical advantage. Meanwhile, Boko Haram is said to be moving the girls at night, possibly to a second base outside the forest.