Michael Fleshman / Flickr
Protest for the release of girls kidnapped by Boko Haram in Nigeria.
New mass abduction, 4 days after the abduction of 25 girls in a neighboring city. Memories of Chibok come flooding back.
At least 303 students and 12 teachers were kidnapped by armed men during an attack on St. Mary’s School, a Catholic institution located in the state of Nigerin north-central Nigeria, an official source reported this Saturday.
The update was made by the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), as the previous number accounted for a total of 215 abducted students and teachers.
According to the Associated Press (AP) and France-Presse (AFP) news agencies, the number was revised “after a verification exercise and the carrying out of a final census”, indicates a statement released by Archbishop Bulus Dauwa Yohanna, president of the state section of CAN, who visited the school on Friday.
The abduction in the remote community of Papiri occurred four days after 25 students were kidnapped in similar circumstances in the town of Maga, in the neighboring state of Kebbi, 170 kilometers away.
No group has so far claimed responsibility for the abductions and authorities said they had deployed tactical teams, along with local hunters, to rescue the children.
“This is very regrettable. Terrorists are perpetrating a new wave of kidnappings and we cannot give in”, declared the national president of CAN, Joseph Hayab, to the Spanish news agency EFE.
The numbers represent almost half of the total number of students at the school (629 enrolled students).
Authorities in the neighboring states of Katsina and Plateau ordered the closure of all educational establishments as a precautionary measure.
The Niger State Government also closed numerous schools, and Nigerian President Bola Tinubu canceled his international commitments, including participation in the G20 summit in Johannesburg (South Africa), to manage the crisis.
These two mass kidnappings and the attack on a church in the west of the country, which caused two deaths, occurred after US President Donald Trump threatened one due to what he classified as massacres of Christians by radical Islamists.
Nigeria continues to be marked by the kidnapping of almost 300 young girls, claimed by jihadists in Chibok, in the state of Borno (northeast), more than ten years ago. Some remain missing.
