- British Foreign Secretary confirms Britain will help in the search for the girls
- United States have also called in FBI agents to assist in finding them
- Comes as video was released of Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau
- In it he threatens to sell the girls on the market
- Around 270 girls were kidnapped from a school in Chibok last month
Both Britain and America are to help in the search for over 200 kidnapped schoolgirls in Nigeria who are set to be sold as sex slaves.
British Foreign Minister William Hague confirmed that Britain would provide 'practical help' to secure the safe release of the 270 girls who were snatched by an Islamist militant group last month.
The United States have also called in the FBI to join the race to find the girls, who were taken during a raid in the village of Chibok in the north east of the country.
It is thought that the extremist group Boko Haram is behind the kidnapping, with the head of the group saying he would sell them on the market.
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Warning: A grab taken from a video obtained by French news agency AFP which shows the leader of Islamist group Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau (centre), vowing to sell hundreds of captured schoolgirls as sex slaves
Tyrant: Shekau (centre) claimed responsibility on Monday for the abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls during a raid in the village of Chibok in northeast Nigeria last month
William Hague, pictured, has announced Britain will be offering 'practical help' in the race to find 270 missing Nigerian schoolgirls
Mr Hague told reporters as he arrived in Vienna for a Council of Europe meeting: 'We are offering practical help.
'What has happened here... the actions of Boko Haram to use girls as the spoils of war, the spoils of terrorism, is disgusting. It is immoral.'
However, he said he did not want to discuss the details of what help Britain was offering.
It comes as the Attorney General Eric Holder said the US was sending FBI agents to trace the girls as grief-stricken families took to the streets in protest at the fact their loved ones remain missing.
Smirking: The brazenness and brutality of the kidnap has shocked Nigerians, who have been growing accustomed to hearing about atrocities in the five-year-old Islamist insurgency in the north
The news that both the UK and U.S. will help in the search comes after a video was released of the head of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau.
In the video, Shekau declares: 'I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market, by Allah.'
He is seen dressed in combat fatigues standing in front of an armoured personnel carrier and two pick-up trucks mounted with sub-machine guns.
Tthe images are blurry at times, but zoom in to Shekau, who speaks in the local Hausa language and Arabic as well as English.
Six armed men stand beside him with their faces covered.
For the first 14 minutes, he takes a swipe at democracy, Western education, efforts for Muslims and Christians to live in peace and rails against non-believers in Islam.
'I abducted a girl at a Western education school and you are disturbed. I said Western education should end.
'Western education should end. Girls, you should go and get married,' he said.
'I will repeat this: Western education should fold up. I abducted your girls.'
'I will sell them in the market, by Allah,' Shekau said, claiming his group was holding the girls as 'slaves'.
Demonstrators have taken to the streets of Nigerian cities including Lagos and Abuja in recent days to voice their displeasure at their goverment's failure to ensure the safe release of more than 200 school girls taken hostage over two week ago
Former Nigerian Education Minister and Vice-President of the World Bank's Africa division Obiageli Ezekwesilieze leads a march of Nigeria women and mothers of the kidnapped girls of Chibok, calling for their freedom in Abuja on April 30
I will marry off a woman at the age of 12. I will marry off a girl at the age of nine,' he said elsewhere in the video.
The kidnapping occurred the same day as a bomb blast, also blamed on Boko Haram, that killed 75 people on the edge of Abuja and marked the first attack on the capital in two years.
Unconfirmed reports from local leaders in Chibok suggested that the girls had been taken across Nigeria's borders with Chad and Cameroon and sold as brides for as little as $12.
With outrage growing over the failure to rescue the girls, thousands of Nigerians took to the streets of the country’s largest city Lagos on Thursday to protest at their government’s inability to find the victims.
Protesters around the world have also harnessed the power of social media using hashtags including #BringBackOurGirls and #BringBackOurDaughters to demand that more is done.
A social media campaign to raise awareness globally about the kidnapping is gaining momentum with celebrities including Mary J Blige adding their support
Celebrities including singers Mary J Blige, Janelle Monae and Deborah Cox have retweeted the call for more to be done to rescue the school girls.
Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan has said security forces are doing all they can to find the girls and the Associated Press has reported that his government is in negotiations with the terrorists who are demanding an unspecified ransom for the students' release.
The girls are between 16 and 18 years old and had been recalled to the school to write a physics exam when they were seized.
About 50 of the kidnapped girls managed to escape from their captors in the first days after their abduction, but some 220 remain missing, according to the principal of the Chibok Girls Secondary School, Asabe Kwambura. Two of the girls have reportedly died from snake bites.
Boko Haram opposes the education of women and under their version of Sharia law believe that women should be at home raising children and looking after their husbands, not at school learning to read and write.
The protests come as parents say the girls are being sold into marriage to Boko Haram militants
Attack: The militants struck in Chibok, in northwestern Nigeria, last month
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