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An armed gang kidnapped more than 300 schoolchildren in an attack on a boarding school in northwestern Nigeria, authorities said Friday.
“There is information that they were transferred to a neighboring forest, and we are tracking and acting with caution,” Nigerian Zamfara State Police Commissioner Abutu Yaro told reporters.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the raid.
President Muhammadu Buhari called the kidnappers “bandits” motivated by money.
“This administration will not succumb to blackmail by bandits who target innocent school students with the expectation of a huge ransom payment,” he said in a statement.
Buhari urged state governments to review their policy of giving money and vehicles as payment to criminal groups.
“Such a policy has the potential to backfire and have disastrous consequences,” Buhari said.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres also condemned the incident and called for the “immediate and unconditional release” of the children, according to his spokesman, Stephane Dujarric.
The kidnappers ‘came shooting’
The overnight incident, the second mass kidnapping in a week, took place in the town of Jangebe, Zamfar, around midnight.
“Unknown gunmen came shooting sporadically and took the girls away,” Zamfara state information commissioner Sulaiman Tanau Anka told Reuters news agency.
“The information that I have says that they came with vehicles and transferred the students, they also moved some on foot,” he said.
A local resident told the AP news agency that the group also targeted a nearby military camp and a checkpoint to keep soldiers away from the school.
Tensions rose after the attack, and local people expressed their emotions with journalists and security forces.
“The villagers stoned the two vehicles we were in, forcing us to hurry away,” said Umar Shehu, a reporter for Daily confidence Newspaper. He also told the AFP news agency that a video journalist suffered a head injury when a stone struck the windshield.
Parents gathered at the school to wait for news, two teachers said.
‘Brutal’ attack
A teacher at the school, who wished to remain anonymous, previously told AFP news agency that “more than 300 girls are missing after a count of remaining students.”
Several armed groups operate in the state of Zamfara and are known to kidnap for money or in exchange for the release of their members from prison.
UNICEF Representative in Nigeria Peter Hawkins called for the girls’ immediate release.
“We are angry and saddened by another brutal attack on school children in Nigeria,” he said. “This is a serious violation of children’s rights and a horrible experience for children.”
Abuja DW Analysis
DW correspondent Uwaisu Idris said Nigerian security forces were chasing bandits in a wooded area where many criminal groups operate.
He said the gunmen were probably “kidnapping for ransom” and that some Nigerians in rural areas were turning to these gangs because they felt abandoned by the government.
“Insecurity is getting worse, it is poverty, it is bad government, it is injustice, it is corruption,” he said. “When you don’t give them a job, when you don’t give them their own livestock to raise, what else is they going to do?”
Increase in violence
Northwest Nigeria has seen an increase in attacks by heavily armed criminal gangs in recent years. These groups are largely financially driven, but there are concerns that they are being infiltrated by jihadist militants who are waging an insurgency in the region.
Last week, unidentified gunmen killed a student and abducted 42 people, including 27 children, in an overnight raid on a boarding school in Zamfara’s neighboring state of Niger. The hostages have not yet been released.
In December, more than 300 children were taken from a school in Katsina state. They were finally released.
In the most notorious abduction case in recent years, Boko Haram militants abducted 276 school children from Chibok city in Borno state in 2014. About 100 of them remain missing.
nm.dj/msh (Reuters, AFP)
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