The kidnapping of 287 students in Kuriga was one of three mass abductions in remote northern Nigeria last week.
The kidnapping of 287 students in Kuriga was one of three mass abductions in remote northern Nigeria last week.
Rashidat Hamza is in despair. All but one of her six children are among the nearly 300 students abducted from their school in Nigeria’s conflict-battered northwest.
More than two days after her children — ages 7 to 18 — went to school in remote Kuriga town only to be herded away by a band of gunmen, she was still in shock Saturday.
“We have never seen this kind of thing where our children were abducted from their school,” she told an Associated Press team that arrived in the Kaduna State town to report on Thursday’s attack. “We don’t know what to do, but we believe in God.”
More than two days after her children — ages 7 to 18 — went to school in remote Kuriga town only to be herded away by a band of gunmen, she was still in shock Saturday.
“We have never seen this kind of thing where our children were abducted from their school,” she told an Associated Press team that arrived in the Kaduna State town to report on Thursday’s attack.
It was in Borno’s Chibok town a decade ago that school kidnappings in Nigeria burst into the headlines with the 2014 abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls by Islamic extremists, shocking the world.
But Islamist extremists waging an insurgency in the northeast are suspected of carrying out the kidnapping in Borno.
Locals blame the school kidnappings on herders who are in conflict with the settled communities.
They were just settling into their classrooms at the government primary and secondary school when gunmen “came in dozens, riding on bikes and shooting sporadically,” said Nura Ahmad, a teacher.
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