Lagos, Nov23, (dpa/GNA) – Fifty children who were among over 300 pupils abducted from a Catholic school in northern Nigeria, managed to escape their captors and return to their families, local media reported on Sunday, citing the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN).
Armed men, raided a Catholic boarding school in the village of Papiri in Niger State on Friday morning, and kidnapped 303 children and 12 teachers.
Some 253 pupils remain in captivity, according to the Catholic bishop who leads the school.
Among them are 6-year-old children, local media reported citing parents.
Pope Leo XIV expressed his sorrow on Sunday ahead of the traditional Angelus prayer in Rome. “I feel great pain, especially for the many kidnapped boys and girls and their desperate families,” he said.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack so far. CAN has said the school was raided by “suspected terrorists.”
It comes after armed men kidnapped 25 schoolgirls from a government boarding school in the neighbouring state of Kebbi on Monday.
On Tuesday evening, attackers raided a church in Kwara state, kidnapping 38 worshippers and leaving several people dead.
The governor of Kwara State announced on Sunday that all 38 people abducted from the church had been released. He thanked the security forces and local communities. The exact circumstances of the release, however, remained unclear.
Criminal gangs and Islamist terrorist groups repeatedly kidnap people in the north and centre of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with more than 220 million inhabitants.
The most serious kidnapping of this kind was the 2014 attack on a girls’ school in the town of Chibok, which saw Islamist militia Boko Haram abduct 276 schoolgirls. Eighty-two of the girls are still missing today.
Boko Haram and other jihadist groups waging a violent campaign to establish strict Islamic rule in Nigeria, usually use the kidnappings to make political demands.
Criminal gangs, on the other hand, are mostly interested in extorting ransom money or securing the release of their imprisoned members.
GNA