Johannesburg — More than 100 students were kidnapped from their elementary school in northern Nigeria early Thursday morning by unknown assailants on motorcycles, witnesses told local media outlets and CBS News’ partner network BBC News. One student was said to have been shot in the chaos at the school in the town of Kugira, in Kaduna state, and taken to a hospital.
BBC quoted witnesses as saying the children were between the ages of 8 and 15, and that one teacher was taken along with them.
The abduction comes just days after another mass-kidnapping in Nigeria’s tumultuous north, which reportedly saw scores of children, mostly girls, seized by militants in Borno state, further to the east.
A Kaduna state official confirmed that a mass-kidnapping had taken place in Kugira to a BBC reporter in Nigeria, without providing further details.
The young women and girls seized by gunmen in Borno had been out collecting firewood on Friday, outside a camp for internally displaced people.
Until last week, there had been a significant drop in the number of kidnappings by criminal groups, commonly known as bandits, in Nigeria. The Nigerian government had issued no comment on either of the attacks by late Thursday afternoon.
AP
Witnesses told local news outlets that more than 100 young woman and several boys were seized on Friday taken from near the Babban Sansani IDP. Reports said a large group of people collecting wood were surrounded by the fighters, who let elderly people go before heading into the bush.
The Nigerian Daily Trust newspaper, quoting a source from inside the Babba Sansani camp, said the fighters were from the Islamic militant group Boko Haram, and “three of the girls who escaped and returned to Ngala said the boys [insurgents] took them” close to a village across Nigeria’s northeast border in neighboring Chad.
The United Nation’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs told the French news agency AFP that an estimated 200 people were taken in that raid, and that head counts were being done at the camp to come up with a more exact number.
There were conflicting reports from witnesses about whether the attackers in Borno state were from Boko Haram or the ISIS affiliate in the region, called the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP).
Both groups are active in the region.
Borno State Police said the attack took place Friday afternoon, but the force could not confirm the numbers kidnapped or missing.
The abductions come after Borno officials said late last year that most of Boko Haram’s fighters in the state were either dead or had been apprehended.
If the initial counts prove accurate, Friday’s attack would be the largest mass-kidnapping in Nigeria since the April 14, 2014 attack on the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, which saw 276 girls taken from their dormitory by Boko Haram militants.
