{"id":399512,"date":"2025-11-23T17:02:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T17:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/399512\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T17:02:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T17:02:12","slug":"fifty-children-escape-after-mass-school-abduction-in-nigeria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/399512\/","title":{"rendered":"Fifty children escape after mass school abduction in Nigeria"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fifty of the 315 children kidnapped by gunmen from a Catholic school in Nigeria’s Niger State on Friday have escaped. <\/p>\n

The Christian Association of Nigeria says they have been reunited with their families.<\/p>\n

A major military-led search and rescue operation is under way for the remaining 265 children and 12 teachers who were taken with them.<\/p>\n

Calling for the release of the abductees, Pope Leo XIV expressed “immense sadness” and urged the authorities to act swiftly.<\/p>\n

Authorities in several Nigerian states ordered schools to shut following the mass abduction in Niger and another smaller hostage-taking in Kebbi state on Monday when 20 pupils were kidnapped from a boarding school. <\/p>\n

Orders were given for many schools to close in the states of Kebbi, Niger, Katsina, Yobe and Kwara.<\/p>\n

News of the children’s escape brought welcome relief for families and for a country that has been agonising over the fate of hundreds of schoolchildren abducted in Nigeria’s northwest. <\/p>\n

According to a Christian group involved in the case, the pupils managed to escape between Friday and Saturday in what is being described as a brave and risky attempt to flee their captors.<\/p>\n

The students and teachers were taken from St Mary’s School in Papiri, Niger state. earlier reports spoke of 303 students and 12 teachers being taken. <\/p>\n

Their number surpasses the 276 abducted during the infamous Chibok mass abduction of 2014<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Local police say armed men stormed St Mary’s at around 02:00 (01:00 GMT), abducting students staying there.<\/p>\n

Niger state governor Mohammed Umaru Bongo announced on Saturday that all schools in the area would close, warning that was “not a time for blame game”.<\/p>\n

Dominic Adamu, whose daughters attend the school but were not taken, told the BBC: “Everybody is weak… It took everybody by surprise.”<\/p>\n

One distressed woman tearfully told the BBC that her nieces, aged six and 13, had been kidnapped, adding: “I just want them to come home.”<\/p>\n

The military, police and local vigilantes are conducting a search for the children, combing nearby forests and remote routes believed to have been used by the gunmen.<\/p>\n

Authorities in Niger state said St Mary’s School had disregarded an order to close all boarding facilities following intelligence warnings of a heightened risk of attacks. The school has not commented on that allegation.<\/p>\n

The kidnapping of people for ransom by criminal gangs, known locally as bandits, has become a major problem in many parts of Nigeria.<\/p>\n

The payment of ransoms has been outlawed in an attempt to cut the supply of money to the criminal gangs, but it has had little effect.<\/p>\n

On Monday, more than 20 schoolgirls, who the BBC has been told are Muslim, were kidnapped from a boarding school in Kebbi state.<\/p>\n

Authorities there have now ordered all secondary schools and colleges to close.<\/p>\n

A church was also attacked further south in Kwara state, with two people killed and 38 others abducted.<\/p>\n

Nigerian President Bola Tinubu postponed foreign trips – including to this weekend’s G20 summit in South Africa – in order to address the security concerns.<\/p>\n

This week’s attacks follows claims by right-wing figures in the US, including President Donald Trump, that Christians are being persecuted in Nigeria<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For months, campaigners and politicians in Washington have been alleging that Islamist militants are systematically targeting Christians. The Nigerian government has dismissed this claim.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, Trump said he would send troops into Nigeria “guns a-blazing” if the African nation’s government “continues to allow the killing of Christians”.<\/p>\n

The Nigerian government has called claims that Christians are being persecuted “a gross misrepresentation of reality”.<\/p>\n

An official said that “terrorists attack all who reject their murderous ideology – Muslims, Christians and those of no faith alike”.<\/p>\n

In the north-east, jihadist groups have been battling the state for more than a decade.<\/p>\n

Organisations monitoring violence say most of the victims of these groups are Muslim because most attacks happen in the majority-Muslim north of the country.<\/p>\n

In the centre of Nigeria, there are also frequently deadly attacks between herders – who are mostly Muslim – on farmers, who are largely Christian.<\/p>\n

However, analysts say these are often motivated by competition for resources, such as water or land, rather than religion.<\/p>\n

The militant Islamist group Boko Haram took 276 girls from their school in the town of Chibok in 2014.<\/p>\n

The incident drew international attention and sparked a global campaign seeking their return, which included an intervention from then-US First Lady Michelle Obama.<\/p>\n

Many have since either escaped or been freed, but as many as 100 remain missing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fifty of the 315 children kidnapped by gunmen from a Catholic school in Nigeria’s Niger State on Friday…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":399513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[50,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-399512","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115600093881998563","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}