[ad_1]
Hundreds of desperate parents gathered on Sunday in the courtyard of a secondary school in Kankara state, Nigeria, to call on the authorities to save their children. On Friday, more than three hundred children were abducted by gunmen who attacked the school. The school was raided, the students fled into a forest, and many were kidnapped.
On Sunday, nothing was known about 333 students out of a total of 839 enrolled in the high school, said Katsina State Governor Aminu Bello Masari, who visited the site of the attack, according to Agerpres. Authorities say the army continues to search for the missing as Nigerians have called on the government, social media and opposition banks to redouble their efforts to save the children.
The president, criticized for not acting
Opposition politicians have also criticized President Muhammadu Buhari for his handling of the attack, which took place in his home state. The president, who had come to Katsina on the day of the attack, for a holiday that coincided with a religious holiday in Nigeria, condemned the attack. He said it was committed by cowards against innocent children. UNICEF has called for the unconditional release of the children.
One of the young men, Osama Aminu Maale (18 years old), is one of the lucky ones, because he managed to get rid of the attackers. He said that the armed men asked the oldest of the children to count, first they put them on buses and then divided them into several groups that began to walk.
“He left me behind”
“I was 520 years old. One of the bandits hit me several times because I couldn’t keep up. He left me behind, which gave me the opportunity to escape,” said the teenager.
Armed gangs, sometimes made up of hundreds of members, have been terrorizing rural areas in central and northern Nigeria for years, stealing livestock and kidnapping to demand money. In 2014, the jihadist group Boko Haram, which could be the basis for this act, abducted 276 girls from a school in Chibok, northeast Nigeria, at least a hundred of whom are still missing. Islamist militants operate mainly in northeastern Nigeria, which is the most populous state in Africa.
