Seven-year-old Safiya Kuriga complained she was feeling feverish, but her mother still made her attend class on Thursday. Within two hours, gunmen entered her school and kidnapped Safiya and about 300 other students in Nigeria’s northern Kaduna State.
“I forced her to go to school that morning despite her complaining to me of a fever,” a sobbing Khadiya Kuriga said by telephone from the town of Kuriga. “We have been crying since yesterday. Our children are hungry.”
Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Friday ordered troops to rescue kidnapped students.
Photo: Reuters
Gunmen seized more than 300 primary and secondary school children between the ages of seven and 15, school authorities and parents said.
Some students were later released while a few others escaped, leaving at least 286 missing, said Salisu Abubakar, a teacher at the Local Government Education Authority School.
No one has claimed responsibility for the kidnappings, the first mass school abduction in Nigeria since July 2021, when gunmen seized some 150 children.
Tinubu said he had directed security and intelligence agencies to rescue the children “and ensure that justice is served against the perpetrators.”
“I have received briefing from security chiefs on the two incidents, and I am confident that the victims will be rescued,” he said in a statement. “Nothing else is acceptable to me and the waiting family members of these abducted citizens. Justice will be decisively administered.”
Thirteen-year-old Aminu Abdullahi said the armed men numbered about 50 and were shooting in the air when they entered the school.
He was lucky as he ran into the bush to hide until the gunmen left with many of his schoolmates.
Sani Muazu’s eight-year-old son Ali also escaped, but not after he was taken deep into the bush by the kidnappers.
The young boy was in class when armed men stormed in and ordered everyone to follow them, his father said.
Before he knew what was happening, Ali was walking barefoot in the bush with dozens of others, followed by the gunmen, he said.
“My son did not know how many they were, but he said they were many. They were crying of hunger, exhaustion and dehydration,” Muazu said.
When darkness fell, the children were made to sleep in a large clearing in the forest and Ali took an opportunity to escape.
“That was how my son managed to escape and walked back home throughout the night. We just saw him arrive early this morning and we are grateful to God,” Muazu said.
Additional reporting by AFP
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS