MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 12th March, 2021) A group of armed men on Friday ambushed a school in northwestern Nigeria, and abducted several students, media reported, citing local police spokesman Mohammed Jalige.
According to Nigerian broadcaster Channels Television, Jalige reported the gunmen stormed a college located in the Nigerian Kaduna State overnight into Friday and kidnapped some of the students.
The country's security agencies were deployed to the site to ensure the safety of the remaining students, while the investigators are mulling a rescue operation, the spokesman added.
The kidnapping comes several days after Kaduna State Internal Security Samuel Aruwan unveiled in a report that throughout 2020, more than 900 people were killed and nearly 2,000 were kidnapped across the state. The report shows a worrisome tendency of abductions of schoolgoers in Nigeria's northern and central regions.
Later on Friday, Kaduna Governor Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai released the exact number of those abducted and rescued in the attack.
"Commissioner-Internal Security @samuelaruwan has confirmed the sad news of the attack on the Federal School of Forestry, Afaka. Troops rescued 180 persons, but about 30 students are missing. Families of the students have been briefed on this security emergency," the governor tweeted.
Nigeria is regularly subjected to attacks, killings, and kidnappings, conducted either by bandits or jihadists for ransom or other purposes. Boko Haram - which means "Western education is forbidden" - the militant group linked to the Islamic State terrorist organization (IS, banned in Russia), appears to have intensified its attacks and abductions of schoolchildren across the Western African nation over the past several months.
