AMN
At least 28 of the nearly 300 schoolchildren kidnapped by gunmen have escaped in Nigeria. Nigeria’s Kaduna state governor has been quoted by news agencies stating this.
Nigeria’s army is leading a desperate search for the children taken in the northern town of Kuriga on Thursday.
Troops are working with police and local search teams to comb the forests within Kaduna and neighbouring states.
The kidnapping is the biggest mass abduction from a school since 2021.
School authorities and parents said, gangs of motorcycle-riding armed men took nearly 300 primary and secondary school children between the ages of eight and 15. Almost every family in the town is thought to have a child among those kidnapped.
The kidnappings followed women and children taken from a remote town in Borno state the day before.
Kidnappings for ransom by armed men have become endemic in northern Nigeria, keeping thousands of children from attending school.
In 2022, Nigeria passed a law banning ransom payments to kidnappers and imposed a 15-year jail term for making payments. It also made abduction punishable by death in cases where victims die.