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Security forces on Thursday rescued nearly 350 schoolboys who had been kidnapped by suspected Islamist gunmen in northern Nigeria and taken into a vast forest, the governor of Katsina state said.
The abduction last Friday night had been claimed by Islamist militant group Boko Haram in an unverified audio recording.
Gunmen raided the Government Science Secondary School in Kankara town, Katsina state, on motorbikes and carried off the boys in the biggest such incident in the lawless region in recent years.
Governor Aminu Bello Masari said in a televised interview with state channel NTA that a total of 344 boys held in the Rugu Forest in neighboring Zamfara state had been freed.
Channels Television
Updated December 18, 2020
A picture taken on December 18, 2020, shows the released Kankara students at a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari.
Defence Headquarters (DHQ) said hours after the children regained freedom.
Major General John Enenche, who is the Coordinator of Defence Media Operation at the DHQ, disclosed this in a statement on Friday.
He explained that the schoolboys, 344 of them, were rescued on Thursday by troops of Operation Hadarin Daji – a military operation in the north-west region of the country.
The military spokesman noted that the rescue operation was conducted in line with the promise of the Armed Forces to ensure all the students return safely.
Bello Matawalle, the Governor of Zamfara, has revealed that the Fulani apex socio-cultural organisation, Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria, MACBAN, negotiated the release of the 344 schoolboys who were abducted from Katsina on Friday.
The boys, who were kidnapped from the Government Science Secondary School in Kankara, Katsina State, on December 11 and ferried to a forest in the state were released on Thursday with no ransom reportedly paid.
Matawalle told Daily Nigerian that the state was able to secure their release through the help of MACBAN and repentant bandits.
Despite claims by the Boko Haram insurgents that they kidnapped the boys, Matawalle, who is an opposition governor, told Daily Nigerian that “nothing like Boko Haram in this abduction, the bandits did it.”
Dec 18, 2020 12:32 PM EDT
KATSINA, Nigeria (AP) Bleary, barefoot, apparently numbed by a week of captivity, more than 300 Nigerian schoolboys, freed after being kidnapped in an attack on their school, were welcomed by the governor of Katsina state Friday.
Reunions that are more celebratory and emotional likely will come when the boys are finally reunited with their families, after being examined for any injuries.
The relatively quick release of the more than 330 boys took place after a prompt response by the government, which appears to have learned from earlier mass school abductions, especially of the Chibok schoolgirls, that did not have such a happy result.