KIDNAPPING IN SCHOOL AND CHURCH 50 children in Nigeria escaped after abduction, 38 worshippers rescued

(Patria) - At least 50 of the more than 300 children abducted from a Catholic school in Nigeria by armed men have escaped their captors, a Christian group announced on Sunday, while the president announced the rescue of 38 worshippers abducted in a separate attack last week, AFP reported last night.

Armed men stormed the St. Mary's Boys and Girls School in Niger State on Friday, taking 303 children and 12 teachers in one of Nigeria's largest mass abductions.
The abduction occurred days after armed men stormed a secondary school in the neighboring Kebbi State on Monday, taking 25 schoolgirls.

On Tuesday, armed men stormed a church in Kwara State in an attack that was filmed and broadcast online, showing the service being interrupted by gunfire, worshippers fleeing, and screams being heard.

Two people were killed in that attack, but the 38 abducted worshippers were later rescued by security forces, President Bola Tinubu said on his X social media profile on Sunday.

Separately, the Christian Association of Nigeria said in a statement that they had "received good news as fifty students (of St. Mary's) have escaped and reunited with their parents".

The number of boys and girls, aged between eight and eighteen, abducted from St. Mary's is almost half of the school's over 600 students.

The Nigerian government has not commented on the number of children taken from the school, but Tinubu said in his X post that "51 of the missing" Catholic students "have been found".

"I will not relent," he promised, "and under my watch, we will secure this nation and protect our people".

Growing fears for security in Africa's most populous nation have led to a wave of school closures in some parts of the country.

Since Islamist militants abducted nearly 300 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok over a decade ago, Nigeria has been struggling with a series of mass abductions, mostly carried out by criminal gangs seeking ransom.

Armed gangs often attack remote boarding schools where they know a lack of security will create easy targets. Most victims are released after negotiations.

Deep sadness

Pope Francis on Sunday made an "urgent appeal for the immediate release of the hostages." He expressed his "deep sorrow, especially for the many abducted young boys and girls and their distressed families," at the end of the Angelus prayer.

The two abduction operations and the church attack occurred at a time when US President Donald Trump threatened military action over what he called the persecution of Christians by radical Islamists in Nigeria.

When asked about the recent attacks and abductions on Fox News Radio, Trump said that "what is happening in Nigeria is a disgrace".

Nearly a week after their capture, two dozen schoolgirls in the neighboring Kebbi State are still missing.

According to a security source, security forces have identified locations where they are believed to be held. Only one of the 25 girls managed to escape earlier in the week. Meanwhile, 13 women and girls aged between 16 and 23 were abducted in the northeastern Nigerian state of Borno while returning home from their farms on Saturday, a local official told AFP. One was later released after saying she was married.

"They are all Muslim," said Abubakar Mazhinyi, chairman of the Askira-Uba district, adding that the area from which they were taken is twenty kilometers from Sambisa Forest, a game reserve that has become a jihadist enclave in Borno State.

In addition to kidnapping gangs, Nigeria is also facing a deadly Islamist insurgency in the northeast of the country, where violence has killed more than 40,000 people and displaced around two million since 2019.

Aisha Yesufu, co-founder of the #BringBackOurGirls movement that led the campaign for the release of the Chibok schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram eleven years ago, said that abductions continue because "the authorities are doing nothing" to curb the crisis.