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Dozens of schoolchildren who were rescued from kidnappers in northwestern Nigeria returned home on Friday, many of them barefoot and clinging to blankets.
Television images showed children dressed in dusty clothing, looking tired but otherwise fine, getting off buses in the city of Katsina and walking towards a government building.
One boy, who did not give his name, said the captors regularly beat them with batons. He added that the kidnappers had described themselves as members of the militant Islamist group Boko Haram, although he suspected they were armed bandits.
“They beat us in the morning, every night. We suffered a lot. They only gave us food once a day and water twice a day,” Arise told television.
“They said I should say it’s Boko Haram and gangs from Abu Shekau,” he added, referring to a name used by a Boko Haram leader.
“What I experienced, honestly speaking, is not Boko Haram … They are just tiny and tiny, tiny boys with big guns,” he added.
A week earlier, armed men on motorcycles stormed the boys’ boarding school in the nearby town of Kankara, taking hundreds of them to the vast Rugu forest.
Authorities said security services rescued them on Thursday, but many details about the incident remain unclear, including who was responsible, whether the ransom was paid, how the release of the children was secured, and whether everyone is now safe. except.
The kidnapping took hold of a country already outraged by widespread insecurity and evoked memories of the 2014 Boko Haram abduction of more than 270 school children in the northeastern city of Chibok.
Six years later, only half of the girls have been found or released. Others married combatants, while some are assumed to be dead.
Hours before the rescue of the children was announced, a video began to circulate online that allegedly showed Boko Haram militants with some of the children. Reuters could not verify the authenticity of the images or who published them.
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