Unidentified gunmen kidnapped more than 300 schoolgirls from a school in northwestern Nigeria. It is reported by BBC News.
As one of the eyewitnesses told the publication, the armed men shot at the guard and broke down the gates of a secondary school in the city of Jangebe (Zamfara state). Then, under the pretext of morning prayer, they took the girls out of the hostel and took them to the woods. At the same time, one of the teachers claimed that the attackers arrived in cars and motorcycles and took the girls away. As noted, there were 421 students in the school at the time of the attack, and only 55 were able to escape abduction.
A witness told BBC News that there were over 100 kidnappers. Some of them reportedly were dressed as representatives of the security services. The identity of the kidnappers has not yet been identified.
Most often, criminals take children out of schools for ransom. As the correspondent of the publication in Nigeria Mayeni Jones notes, the government does not have a strategy to prevent such incidents. She points out that global attention has made it clear to armed groups that mass abductions are a sure way to put pressure on the authorities. Currently, the government does not consider it appropriate to negotiate with criminals, and therefore schools in rural areas have become more vulnerable to such attacks.
Similar raids have happened before. On February 17, it was reported that 27 schoolchildren were abducted in the state of Niger. Their whereabouts have not yet been established. In December 2020, attackers kidnapped more than 300 boys, but later the children were released.
Boko Haram radical Islamists are often believed to be behind the attacks – the organization pledged allegiance to the Islamic State terrorist group (banned in Russia) in March 2015 and changed its name to Islamic State West African Province. However, other groups operating in the region are also involved in kidnapping.
