Scores of female students kidnapped by Islamic militants from a northeastern Nigerian school have escaped captivity, Nigeria’s military reported Wednesday.
Only eight of more than 100 students are unaccounted for, Major Genereal Chris Olukolade said in a statement that gave no other details except: “The others have been freed this evening.”
The Nigerian government had reported that security forces were in hot pursuit of militants who abducted more than 100 females from a high school early on Tuesday.
Photo: AFP
Borno State Governor Kashim Shettima told reporters that of the 129 students kidnapped, at least 14 had freed themselves. Four of the students — aged between 16 and 18 — jumped off the back of a truck and 10 others escaped into the bush when the extremists asked them to cook and were not paying attention, Shettima said.
The government had closed all schools in Borno three weeks ago, but the girls who were kidnapped had been recalled so that they could write their final exams.
The abductions came hours after an explosion blamed on extremists killed 75 people in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, angering citizens who are questioning government and military claims that they are containing a five-year-old Islamic uprising.
Two more attacks killed 20 people on Tuesday night and on Wednesday morning in northeastern Nigerian villages.
While the military claims it has cornered insurgents in a remote northeast corner of the West African nation, attacks have increased in frequency and becoming more deadly. More than 1,500 people have been killed so far this year, compared with an estimated 3,600 between 2010 and last year.
Shettima told reporters on Wednesday that the insurgents arrived at Chibok Government’s Secondary School for Girls wearing military fatigues and posing as soldiers — a common tactic used by the insurgents.
His information came from the school’s principal, who said he believed that the men were soldiers removing the young women for their own safety and so did not try to stop them from being loaded onto the back of a truck. It was only when the armed men started shooting as they were leaving and that the principal realized his mistake, Shettima said.
The militants killed a soldier and a police officer guarding the school, officials said. Such attacks are typical of the Boko Haram militant group, whose name means “Western education is sinful” and which has vowed to force an Islamic state on Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation with about 180 million people divided almost equally between the mainly Muslim north and predominantly Christian south.
In one attack in February in which 59 students were burned to death in a dorm, Boko Haram first went to the girl’s residence hall and told them all to go home and forget about education because it was un-Islamic.
Nigeria has Africa’s biggest economy, but 70 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, with the northeast the worst off. Only 5 percent of children get to high school and only a small percentage of those are girls.
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