Gunmen kidnapped at least 15 pupils from a school in Nigeria in a dawn raid on Saturday, days after about 300 children were abducted in another armed raid.
The gunmen forced their way into the school premises in the Sokoto village of Gidan Bakuso, in the country’s north-west, and started firing shots sporadically, waking and causing panic among the pupils, said the school’s owner, Liman Abubakar Bakuso.
“They succeeded in abducting 15 of my students, the oldest being 20 and 15, but all the others are below 13,” said Bakuso by phone, adding that a woman had also been kidnapped.
“We are in a state of panic and have been praying hard for their safe release,” he told Reuters.
Police did not respond to requests for comment.
Kidnappings at schools in Nigeria were first carried out by the jihadist group Boko Haram, which seized more than 200 students from a girls’ school in Chibok in Borno state a decade ago, causing global outrage.
But the tactic has since been adopted by criminal gangs without any ideological affiliation seeking ransom payments, authorities say.
Nigeria’s security forces are stretched fighting an Islamist insurgency in the north-east, leaving vast swathes of land unpoliced and armed gangs to roam freely.
In Kaduna, the state governor told the BBC at least 28 of the schoolchildren kidnapped earlier this week had managed to escape their captors.
Until Thursday’s abduction in Kaduna, Nigeria had witnessed a lull in mass kidnappings from schools since July 2021 when about 150 students were seized by armed men.
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Guardian
