Nearly 300 girls, who were abducted from a boarding school in the northwestern Nigerian state of Zamfara on Friday, have been released by gunmen, the governor said in a tweet on Tuesday.
An armed gang had abducted the girls from the GGSS school (Government Girls Science Secondary) in the city of Jangebe. A rescue operation was underway to get the girls back to safety.
A teacher at GGSS, who asked to remain anonymous, had said that the attack occurred around 1 o’clock (12 GMT) but did not provide information on the number of students present at the school at the time, Agence France-Presse (AFP) had reported.
Zamafara State Spokeswoman Sulaiman Tanau Anka told Reuters that some of the missing girls had run into the bush at the time of the attack, and the number of kidnappers was 279, in contrast to the previously reported 317.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said on Tuesday that he felt “overwhelming joy” at the news that the kidnappers had released the schoolgirls unharmed.
In a Tweet, Buhari said he was “pleased that their trials have reached a happy ending without any incident.”
Meanwhile, Zamfara Governor Bello Matawalle reiterated the President’s joy. “Alhamdulillah! It pleases my heart to announce the release of the GGSS Jangebe abducted students from captivity,” Matawalle said on Twitter.
“This follows the scaling of several obstacles to our efforts. I urge all well-meaning Nigerians to rejoice with us as our daughters are now safe,” he said.
The governor’s tweets did not indicate the number of girls released. The messages contained pictures of girls and small buses, Reuters reported.
Schools have become the target of mass kidnappings of rapists in northern Nigeria by armed groups.
Such kidnappings in Nigeria were first carried out by the terrorist group Boko Haram, and later its offshoot Islamic State, West Africa, but the tactics have now been adopted by other criminal gangs.
The raid in the state of Zamfara was the second such kidnapping in just over a week in the northwest, a region that is increasingly targeted at criminal gangs. On Saturday, gunmen released 27 teenage boys abducted from their school on February 17 in the north-central state of Niger.
Two weeks ago, 42 people were taken by a gang from a school in the nearby state of Niger.
In December, more than 300 boys from a school in Kankara, Katsina’s home state of President Muhammadu Buhari, were abducted while visiting the region.
The boys were later released but the incident sparked outrage and memories of kidnappings of schoolgirls by terrorist groups in Dapchi and Chibok that shocked the world.
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