Supporters urged authorities to rescue the abducted schoolchildren in the northwestern state of Katsina, Nigeria on 17 December.
Photo:
Cola Suleiman / Agnes France-Presse / Getty Images
More than 300 schoolchildren abducted by gunmen from their boarding school in northwestern Nigeria in Northwestern Nigeria were handed over to government security agencies late Thursday last night, officials in Nigeria said, in Africa’s most populous country They will remain hostage to jihadi terrorists for a long time to spread waves of relief and happiness.
Just after 8pm on Thursday, Katina State Governor Aminu Bello Masari announced in a televised interview that 344 boys had been handed over to state officials in the jungle of the neighboring state of Zamfara, more than a hundred miles from their school in Katcina. state.
He said the freed hostages would be immediately taken to Katcina for medical treatment and were likely to arrive around midnight.
Other local officials said the boys would meet President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday.
The jihadist group Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, saying on Tuesday that it seized students of Kakara Government Science Secondary School to punish them for “non-Islamic practices”.
Hours before the Governor’s announcement on Thursday, Boko Haram released a video showing dozens of school students. In the six-minute video, the hostages said that some of their classmates had died during captivity and begged the government to negotiate for their release.
Many details surrounding the abduction, including a true rally to take so many school children to a remote agricultural area with poor communication, remain mute spectators.
Neither Mr. Masari nor other state governors offered details of the deal to secure his release.
In 2016, teenagers Binta Uma and Maimuna Musa were abducted by Boko Haram in Maidagali, Nigeria. He was forced to marry and sent to suicide. In this video, the girls tell their story of being alive. Photo by Jonathan Torgovnik for the Wall Street Journal (originally published on July 26, 2019)
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