The United States on Tuesday condemned “in the strongest terms” the abduction of more than 300 schoolboys from their school in northwestern Nigeria and was investigating Boko Haram’s claim of responsibility, a spokesperson for the State Department said.
A man identifying himself as the leader of Nigeria’s Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is forbidden” in the local Hausa language, said the Islamist group was behind the kidnapping which occurred on Friday at a secondary school in Nigeria’s state of Katsina.
Boko-Haram
Hundreds of students remain missing after gunmen attacked an all-boys boarding school in northwestern Nigeria, authorities said.
A group of “bandits” wielding assault rifles stormed the Government Science Secondary School in the town of Kankara in Katsina state on Friday night, according to a statement from Katsina State Police Command spokesperson Gambo Isah.
Police officers engaged the assailants in a gunfight that gave some of the students “the opportunity to scale the fence of the school and run for safety,” Isah said in the statement Saturday. More than 200 pupils have since been located, but around 400 others are unaccounted for, according to Isah.
An empty classroom as the students who normally sit in it have been abducted
However, after meeting with security officials on Sunday, Katsina state Gov. Aminu Bello Masari said a total of 839 students are enrolled at the Government Science Secondary School and that the number of those still missing is 333. It’s unclear how many were abducted and how many others fled during the attack and have yet to be found.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has condemned the attack and urged school officials to carry out an audit of the student population to ascertain the exact number of those missing and those who have been found.
“Our prayers are with the families of the students, the school authorities and the injured,” Buhari said in a statement Saturday.
(With reuters/BBC reports)
