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Unidentified gunmen captured 317 schoolchildren in northwestern Nigeria on Friday, police said, the second such kidnapping in just over a week in a region increasingly targeted by militants.
School kidnappings, first practiced by jihadist groups Boko Haram and the West African province of the Islamic State, have become endemic in the increasingly lawless north, to the anguish of families and frustration of the government and armed forces. from Nigeria.
Police in the state of Zamfara, where the latest attack took place, said search and rescue operations had begun with the army to find the “armed bandits” who took the girls away at the government’s science high school for girls. in the city of Jangebe.
Zamfara Information Commissioner Sulaiman Tanau Anka told Reuters the attackers fired sporadically during the 1 a.m. raid.
“The information that I have says that they came with vehicles and transferred the students, they also moved some on foot,” he said.
It was the third kidnapping of its kind since December.
The rise in kidnappings is due in part to hefty government payments for child hostages, catalyzing a broader breach of security in the north, officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The government regularly denies such payments.
School kidnappings were first the domain of Boko Haram and the Islamic State’s West African province in the northeast, but the tactic has now been adopted by other militants in the northwest, whose agenda is unclear.
There was no immediate liability claim for Friday’s raid.
President Muhammadu Buhari replaced his longtime military chiefs earlier this month amid escalating violence. The northeastern armed forces are fighting to retake the cities invaded by insurgents.
Last week, unidentified gunmen abducted 42 people, including 27 students, and killed one student, in a night attack on a boarding school in the north-central state of Niger.
The hostages have not yet been released.
In December, dozens of gunmen abducted 344 schoolchildren from the city of Kankara, in the northwestern state of Katsina. They were released after six days, but the government denied that a ransom had been paid.
In 2018, the Islamic State branch in West Africa kidnapped more than 100 schoolchildren from the city of Dapchi in northeastern Nigeria, all but one, the only Christian, were released.
A ransom was paid, according to the United Nations.
Perhaps the most notorious kidnapping in recent years was when Boko Haram militants abducted 276 school children from Chibok city in Borno state in April 2014. The incident attracted global attention.
Many have been found or rescued by the army, or released in negotiations between the government and Boko Haram, also for a considerable ransom, according to sources.
But there are still 100 missing, either with Boko Haram or dead, security officials say.
Reuters
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