The Boko Haram group has claimed responsibility for the abduction of hundreds of students in an attack on a boys’ school in Nigeria’s northwestern state of Katsina, media reported on Tuesday. More than 330 students are missing from Government Science Secondary School in Kankara after gunmen attacked their school on Friday night, forcing hundreds of students to flee and hide in surrounding bushes and forests.
The Daily Nigerian said on Tuesday that it had received an audio message from Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau, who was behind the abduction of hundreds of schoolgirls in Chibok in 2014, claiming that it was his group that abducted the schoolboys. There has been no independent verification of the audio message, but Shekau has previously released video and audio messages on behalf of Boko Haram.
Nigerian Presidential spokesman Garba Shehu said in a statement on Monday that “the kidnappers had made contact and there were already discussions about children’s safety and return” to their homes. Shehu said nothing about the identity of the abductors.
Several armed groups work in northwestern Nigeria, where the state of Katsina is located. It was originally thought that the attackers were bandits, who sometimes work with Boko Haram.
The government said a joint rescue operation was launched on Saturday by Nigerian police, air force and army after the military pursued firearms with bandits after finding their hiding place in the Zango / Paula forest. Many of the more than 600 male students were able to escape during the attack while police launched a fight, according to Katsina State Police spokesman Gambo Isah.
Boko Haram has previously abducted students from schools. The most serious school attack took place in April 2014, when more than 270 schoolgirls were abducted from their dormitory at Government Secondary School in Chibok in the northeastern state of Borno. About 100 of the girls are still missing, according to the Associated Press (AP).
The latest incident at the Government Science Secondary School in Kankara is the worst attack on a boys’ school since February 2014, when 59 boys were killed during a Boko Haram attack on Federal Government College Buni Yadi in Yobe State.
Boko Haram launched a bloody uprising in 2009 in northeastern Nigeria but later spread its atrocities to nearby Niger, Chad and Cameroon, leading to a military response. More than 30,000 people have been killed and nearly 3 million displaced over a decade by Boko Haram violence in Nigeria, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Boko Haram’s violence has affected 26 million people in the Lake Chad region and displaced 2.6 million others, according to the UN refugee agency.
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