Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: NIGERIAN authorities have secured the release of 100 kidnapped schoolchildren taken by gunmen from a Catholic school last month, a UN source and local media said on December 7 , though the fate of another 165 students and staff thought to remain in captivity remained unclear.
In November 315 students and staff were kidnapped from St Mary’s co-educational boarding school in north-central Niger state, as the country buckled under a wave of mass abductions reminiscent of the infamous 2014 Boko Haram abduction of schoolgirls in Chibok. About 50 of the abductees escaped shortly afterward, leaving 265 thought to be in captivity.
Local media reported that the release of 100 children had been secured, without offering details on whether it was done through negotiation or military force, nor on the fate of the remaining students and staff thought to still be in the kidnappers’ hands.
The country faces a long-running jihadist insurgency in the north-east, while armed bandit gangs conduct kidnappings and loot villages in the northwest, and farmers and herders clash in the country’s centre over dwindling land and resources.
