Nigeria announces cease-fire with Boko Haram

Nigeria's military announced Friday that it had agreed to a cease-fire with the Boko Haram group, adding that the more than 200 schoolgirls the group kidnapped six months ago will be released.

Nigeria's Chief of Defense, Alex Badeh, ordered his troops to immediately comply with the agreement. The Voice of America news service reported that Danladi Ahmadu, a figure who described himself the secretary-general of group – but whose identity has been questioned by some analysts – confirmed that a cease-fire agreement had been reached. 

Government officials said they had agreed to "some concessions" to the extremist group, but did not provide any details. Boko Haram has previously demanded the release of detained fighters in exchange for the girls.

“We are in a holding statement mode – cautiously optimistic and anxious for early evidence of veracity,” Obiageli Ezekwesili, the former Nigerian education minister who founded the Bring Back Our Girls campaign in Nigeria, told Al Jazeera. “Like many of you, I simply cannot afford another heart shattering episode and so we are so praying that what we are all reading is true.” 

News of the cease-fire came as another Nigerian government official said there had been direct negotiations this week in neighboring Chad about the release the schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram.

A senior adviser to Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan told Al Jazeera that the deal reached on Friday included the release of the girls, but that no date had been set and that the release was part of an "ongoing process."

Nigeria analysts expressed caution over the veracity of the announcement, noting that previous claims that the girls had been rescued had turned out to be false. 

It could take days for word to get to Boko Haram fighters, who are broken into several groups, analysts said. They include foreigners from neighboring countries Chad, Cameroon and Niger, where the insurgents also have camps.

The group attracted international condemnation with the April kidnapping of 276 girls and young women writing final examinations at a boarding school in the remote northeastern town of Chibok. Dozens escaped but 219 remain missing.

Dozens more schoolgirls and boys, young women and men have been kidnapped by the extremists in a 5-year-old insurgency. Jonathan has said that the extremists have killed 13,000 civilians.

In August, Boko Haram began seizing and holding territory where it declared a caliphate, apparently copying the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, group fighting in Iraq and Syria.

But the tide appears to have turned in recent weeks, with the Nigerian military wrestling some towns from Boko Harem and reporting to have killed hundreds of its fighters.

French President Francois Hollande on Friday welcomed the announcement of an accord on the Nigerian schoolgirls as "good news."

"We have information that allows us to think that (the release of the girls) could happen in the coming hours and days," he said during a press conference in Paris, without providing further details.

Al Jazeera and wire services