The United States has offered to send an American team of experts to Nigeria to support the government's response to the kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls by an Islamist militant group, President Barack Obama's administration said on Tuesday.

"We're going to do everything we can to provide assistance to them," Obama told NBC News in an interview. "In the short term our goal is obviously to help the international community, and the Nigerian government, as a team to do everything we can to recover these young ladies."

The group Boko Haram kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls last month and has threatened to sell them into slavery. Suspected Boko Haram gunmen kidnapped eight more girls from a village near one of the Islamists' strongholds in northeastern Nigeria overnight, police and residents said on Tuesday.