By Agency
Nigeria Security forces has rescued nearly 350 schoolboys who had been kidnapped in northwestern Nigeria and taken into a vast forest, the governor of Katsina state said, bringing relief to many families.
It was not immediately clear whether all the missing boys had been recovered.
“I think we have recovered most of the boys,” Governor Aminu Bello Masari said in a televised interview with state channel NTA.
The abduction gripped a country already incensed by widespread insecurity, and evoked memories of Boko Haram’s 2014 kidnapping of more than 270 schoolgirls in the northeastern town of Chibok.
Gunmen raided the Government Science Secondary School in Katsina on motorbikes and marched the boys into Rugu forest, in the biggest such incident in the lawless region in recent years.
According to Reuters, Masari said a total of 344 boys held in the forest had been freed in neighboring Zamfara state. He did not say how many had been missing or how they were freed.
He said security forces had cordoned off the area where the boys were being held and were given instructions not to shoot.
“We thank God that they took our advice and not a single shot was fired,” he said.
The boys were on their way back to Katsina and would be medically examined and reunited with their families on Friday, Masari said.
