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The video clip shows a boy making demands on behalf of Boko Haram
344 students who were abducted in northwestern Nigeria last week were released on Thursday, according to a local official.
A spokesman for the Katsina state governor said the 344 released students were in good condition.
However, it is not clear if all the children have been released.
The militant group Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the attack and, hours earlier, released a video clip that apparently showed some of the children.
In his statement, Nigerian official spokesman Abdul Labaran said that the children had been transferred to the regional capital, Katsina, and that they would soon be reunited with their families.
Labaran confirmed the authenticity of the video clip, which was allegedly from Boko Haram, but clarified that the alleged message from the group’s leader, Abu Bakr Shekau, was an identity theft.
“We have recovered most of the children. Not all of them,” Reuters quoted Governor Amino Bello Massari as saying, while a security source told AFP that some of them are still in the hands of the kidnappers.
Labaran said none of the kidnapped children were killed, contradicting the words of the boy who appeared in the video, who said that some of them were killed by Nigerian fighter jets.
Few further details were announced, while news of BBC Hosa’s release was confirmed by another government official.
Boko Haram has been known for school kidnappings for the past decade, including in Chibok in 2014, when nearly 300 schoolchildren were detained.
These kidnappings have so far occurred in the northeast, where Boko Haram is stationed. Hundreds of students who had been abducted days earlier were released from boarding school last week, local authorities told the BBC.
Image posted, Gail kankara
The school the children were kidnapped from
What does the video show?
The six-minute recording shows a child in the foreground, dressed with a disheveled face.
Dozens of children, some of whom appear very small, stand in the back begging.
In a mix of English and Hausa, the boy speaking says that the leader of the Boko Haram gang, Abu Bakr Shekau, abducted them.
He adds that some of the children were killed by Nigerian warplanes and calls for the closure of all schools, except the Koranic schools.
It stresses that all government forces sent to help them must be returned.
And in part of his speech, his voice was broken and the other children started crying.
