Fifty of the more than 300 children snatched by gunmen from a Catholic school in Nigeria have escaped their captors, a Christian group said on Sunday.
Gunmen on Friday raided St Mary’s co-education school in Niger state, taking 303 children and 12 teachers in one of the largest mass kidnappings in Nigeria.
The abduction came days after gunmen stormed a secondary school in neighbouring Kebbi state, abducting 25 girls. “We have received some good news as fifty pupils escaped and have reunited with their parents,” said the Christian Association of Nigeria in a statement, adding they escaped between Friday and Saturday.
The number of boys and girls – aged between eight and 18 years – kidnapped from St Mary’s is almost half of the school’s student population of 629.
The Nigerian government has yet to comment on the number of students and teachers abducted.
“As much as we receive the return of these 50 children that escaped with some sigh of relief, I urge you all to continue in your prayers for the rescue and safe return of the remaining victims,” CAN chairman in Niger State, Reverend Bulus Dauwa Yohanna, said in the statement.
Mounting security fears in Africa’s most populous nation have sparked a wave of school closures across the country.
Since Islamist militants kidnapped nearly 300 schoolgirls from Chibok town more than a decade ago, Nigeria has struggled with a spate of mass kidnappings, mostly carried out by criminal gangs looking for ransom payments.
Gunmen often attack remote boarding schools where they know a lack of security presence will make for soft targets. Most victims are released after negotiations.
Pope Leo XIV on Sunday made “a heartfelt appeal for the immediate release of the hostages”.
He expressed his “deep sorrow, especially for the many young boys and girls kidnapped and for their anguished families,” at the end of the Angelus prayer.
The two abduction operations and an attack on a church in the west of the country, in which two people were killed and dozens abducted, came as US President Donald Trump threatened military action over what he called the persecution of Christians by radical Islamists in Nigeria.
When asked about the recent attacks and kidnappings on Fox News Radio, Trump said “what’s happening in Nigeria is a disgrace”.
Nigeria is also dealing with a deadly Islamist insurgency in the northeast of the country, where the violence has killed more than 40,000 people and displaced around two million since it erupted in 2019.