At least 50 of the more than 300 children snatched by gunmen from a Catholic school in Nigeria have escaped their captors, a Christian group said on Sunday, as the president announced the rescue of 38 worshipers seized in a separate attack last week.
Gunmen on Friday last week raided St Mary’s coeducation school in Niger state, taking 303 children and 12 teachers in one of the largest mass kidnappings in Nigeria.
The abduction came days after gunmen stormed a secondary school in neighboring Kebbi state, taking 25 girls. On Tuesday last week, gunmen raided a church in Kwara state in an attack that was recorded and broadcast online, showing the service being interrupted by gunfire, worshipers fleeing and screaming being heard outside.
Photo: Reuters
Two people were killed in that attack, but the 38 worshipers who were abducted were later rescued by security forces, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu said Sunday on social media.
The Christian Association of Nigeria in a statement said that “we have received some good news as 50 [St Mary’s] pupils escaped and have reunited with their parents.”
The number of boys and girls — aged between eight and 18 years old — kidnapped from St Mary’s is almost half of the school’s student population of more than 600.
The Nigerian government has not commented on the number of children taken from the school, but Tinubu said in his post that “51 out of the missing” Catholic school students “have been recovered.”
“I will not relent, and under my watch, we will secure this nation and protect our people,” he said.
Mounting security fears in Africa’s most populous nation have sparked a wave of school closures across some parts of the country.
Since Islamist militants kidnapped nearly 300 schoolgirls from Chibok more than a decade ago, Nigeria has struggled with a spate of mass kidnappings, mostly carried out by criminal gangs looking for ransom payments.
Gangs often attack remote boarding schools where they know a lack of security presence would make for soft targets. Most victims are released after negotiations.
Pope Leo XIV on Sunday made “a heartfelt appeal for the immediate release of the hostages.”
He expressed his “deep sorrow, especially for the many young boys and girls kidnapped, and for their anguished families,” at the end of the Angelus prayer.
The two abduction operations and the church attack came as US President Donald Trump threatened military action over what he called the persecution of Christians by radical Islamists in Nigeria.
When asked about the attacks and kidnappings on Fox News Radio, Trump said: “What’s happening in Nigeria is a disgrace.”
Nearly a week after their capture, two dozen school girls in neighboring Kebbi state are still missing. Security forces have identified locations where they are thought to be held, a security source said. Only one of the 25 girls managed to escape early in the week.
Meanwhile, 13 women and girls aged between 16 and 23 were kidnapped in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno state while walking home from their farms on Saturday, a local official said.
DISASTER: The Bangladesh Meteorological Department recorded a magnitude 5.7 and tremors reached as far as Kolkata, India, more than 300km away from the epicenter A powerful earthquake struck Bangladesh yesterday outside the crowded capital, Dhaka, killing at least five people and injuring about a hundred, the government said. The magnitude 5.5 quake struck at 10:38am near Narsingdi, Bangladesh, about 33km from Dhaka, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. The earthquake sparked fear and chaos with many in the Muslim-majority nation of 170 million people at home on their day off. AFP reporters in Dhaka said they saw people weeping in the streets while others appeared shocked. Bangladesh Interim Leader Muhammad Yunus expressed his “deep shock and sorrow over the news of casualties in various districts.” At least five people,
It is one of the world’s most famous unsolved codes whose answer could sell for a fortune — but two US friends say they have already found the secret hidden by Kryptos. The S-shaped copper sculpture has baffled cryptography enthusiasts since its 1990 installation on the grounds of the CIA headquarters in Virginia, with three of its four messages deciphered so far. Yet K4, the final passage, has kept codebreakers scratching their heads. Sculptor Jim Sanborn, 80, has been so overwhelmed by guesses that he started charging US$50 for each response. Sanborn in August announced he would auction the 97-character solution to K4
SHOW OF FORCE: The US has held nine multilateral drills near Guam in the past four months, which Australia said was important to deter coercion in the region Five Chinese research vessels, including ships used for space and missile tracking and underwater mapping, were active in the northwest Pacific last month, as the US stepped up military exercises, data compiled by a Guam-based group shows. Rapid militarization in the northern Pacific gets insufficient attention, the Pacific Center for Island Security said, adding that it makes island populations a potential target in any great-power conflict. “If you look at the number of US and bilateral and multilateral exercises, there is a lot of activity,” Leland Bettis, the director of the group that seeks to flag regional security risks, said in an
‘DIGNITY’: The Ukrainian president said that ‘we did not not betray Ukraine then, we will not do so now,’ amid US pressure to give significant concessions to Russia Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pushed back against a US plan to end the war in Ukraine, while Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomed the proposal that includes many of his hardline demands. With US President Donald Trump giving Ukraine less than a week to sign, Zelenskiy pledged to work to ensure any deal would not “betray” Ukraine’s interests, while acknowledging he risked losing Washington as an ally. Putin said the blueprint could “lay the foundation” for a final peace settlement, but threatened more land seizures if Ukraine walked away from negotiations. Ukraine faces one of the most challenging moments in its history,
RSS