Nigerian authorities have announced that 17 students kidnapped by the Boko Haram armed group from a school in north-western Nigeria have been rescued in an operation that resulted in the death of two students.
The news comes after Katsina state’s Governor, Aminu Masari told reporters he had ordered a joint rescue operation by Nigeria’s police, air force and army to be carried out, after over 300 students were kidnapped by the terrorist group from a boarding school in Kankara, a small town in Katsina.
“The majority of the kidnapped students are in the Zamfara forest in the neighbouring province. Efforts are under way to save them,” he said.
Katsina state’s police spokesman Gambo Isah said a security guard was injured during the operation and additional security forces would be dispatched to the area for search and rescue operations.
Attackers on motorcycles stormed the all-boys Government Science Secondary School last week and engaged security forces in a fierce gun battle, forcing hundreds of students to flee and hide in the surrounding forest.
Boko Haram, which had kidnapped hundreds of schoolgirls in the country’s Chibok region in 2014, later claimed responsibility for the abduction after the attack was initially blamed on armed groups locally known as “bandits.”
Defence Minister, Bashir Salihi Magashi has visited the area, promising the students would be rescued soon, as parents and residents continued to demonstrate for their release.
He has in the interim, ordered the closure of all boarding schools in the state in the wake of the attack.
Umar Ahmed, an 18-year-old student who managed to escape the abductors has managed to give details of how the traumatic night unfolded.
According to Ahmed, the nightmare began in confusion. The gunmen arrived at his school just as he and his classmates were about to go to bed.
Their [the students] first thought was that the men were vigilantes – civilians who take on a policing role – “so, we were not scared,” the 18-year-old said.
But then, he says heavy firing started. “We became terrified. Some of us ran to the perimeter fence trying to escape, while others hid inside.
“They kept shouting we should come back, that they were in the school to rescue us. And most of us came back,” he added.
Ahmad went on to explain how the students were rounded up under a tree, split into three groups and led through the forest.
“We had no footwear,” he said, his feet swathed in black socks after they became riddled with thorns.
The teenager said the group trekked for hours, heading towards neighbouring Zamfara state. “They flogged us with tree branches and the flat side of their machetes,” he said.
But then came a stroke of luck, he intimated.
He and a friend were able to hide behind a bush, waiting for complete silence to prevail before they retraced their steps back home to safety.
This is the first of such massive kidnappings in the northwest of Nigeria. Boko Haram, and a splinter group, the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), are waging an insurgency in Nigeria northeast and are thought to have only a minor presence in the northwest.
