Nigerian army rescues abducted Kaduna students
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria – The Nigerian army on Sunday rescued students and staff who were abducted by gunmen from a school in the country’s north earlier this month, the military said, days before a deadline to pay a $690,000 ransom.
The kidnapping of 287 students on March 7 in Kuriga, a dusty town in the northwestern state of Kaduna, was the first mass abduction in Africa’s most populous nation since 2021, when more than 150 students were taken from a high school in Kaduna.
Military spokesperson Major General Edward Buba said 137 hostages – 76 females and 61 males – were rescued in the early hours of Sunday in the neighboring state of Zamfara.
A security source said earlier the students had been freed in a forest and were being escorted to Kaduna’s capital for medical tests before being reunited with their families.
It was not immediately known whether security forces had to extract the hostages from the hands of their captors or whether there had been any clash in the process.