Fifty children escape after mass school abduction in Nigeria

50 of the 315 children kidnapped by gunmen from a Catholic school in Nigeria’s Niger State on Friday escaped.

The Christian Association of Nigeria announced that they were reunited with their families.

A major search and rescue operation, led by the military, continues for the remaining 265 children and the 12 teachers taken with them.

Pope Leo XIV, who called for the release of the kidnapped people, expressed “great sorrow” and called on the authorities to act quickly.

Authorities in several Nigerian states have ordered schools closed on Monday, following a mass kidnapping in Niger and another minor hostage-taking incident in Kebbi state, when 20 students were abducted from a boarding school.

Many schools have been ordered to close in Kebbi, Niger, Katsina, Yobe and Kwara states.

News of the children’s escape brought welcome relief to families and the country grieving over the fate of hundreds of kidnapped school children in northwestern Nigeria.

The students managed to escape their captors between Friday and Saturday in what was described as a bold and risky attempt, according to a Christian group involved in the case.

The students and teachers were recruited from St Mary’s School in Papiri, Niger state. Previous reports mentioned that 303 students and 12 teachers were kidnapped.

Their number exceeds the 276 people kidnapped. The infamous Chibok mass kidnapping incident in 2014.

Local police said gunmen broke into St Mary’s around 02:00 (01:00 GMT) and abducted students staying there.

Niger state governor Mohammed Umaru Bongo announced on Saturday that all schools in the region would be closed, warning that this was “not the time for the blame game.”

Dominic Adamu, whose daughters went to school but were not admitted, told the BBC: “Everyone is skinny… It surprised everyone.”

A distressed woman told the BBC through tears that her nieces, aged six and 13, had been abducted, adding: “I just want them to come home.”

The army, police and local security forces are conducting a search operation to find the children, combing nearby forests and remote roads believed to be used by gunmen.

Authorities in Niger state said St Mary’s School ignored an order to close all hostels after intelligence warnings of an increased risk of attack. The school did not make any statement regarding this claim.

Kidnapping of people for ransom by criminal gangs known locally as bandits has become a major problem in many parts of Nigeria.

Criminal gangs were banned from paying ransoms in an attempt to cut off the money supply, but this had little effect.

On Monday, more than 20 schoolgirls, said to be Muslim, were abducted from a boarding school in Kebbi province, the BBC reported.

Authorities have now ordered the closure of all secondary schools and colleges.

Further south in Kwara state, a church was also attacked, killing two people and kidnapping 38 people.

Nigerian President Bola Tinubu has postponed his foreign trips, including the G20 summit in South Africa this weekend, to address security concerns.

This week’s attacks are as follows: Claims by right-wing figures in the United States, including President Donald Trump, that Christians are being persecuted in Nigeria.

For months campaigners and politicians in Washington have been claiming that Islamist militants are systematically targeting Christians. The Nigerian government denied this claim.

Earlier this month, Trump said he would send troops “with firearms” to Nigeria if the African country’s government “continues to allow the killing of Christians.”

The Nigerian government has called allegations that Christians are being persecuted a “gross distortion of the truth.”

“Terrorists are attacking anyone who rejects their murderous ideology – Muslims, Christians and those of no faith at all,” one official said.

In the northeast, jihadist groups have been fighting the state for more than a decade.

Organizations that monitor the violence say most of the victims of these groups are Muslims, as most of the attacks occur in the country’s Muslim-majority northern region.

In central Nigeria, there are frequent deadly attacks by predominantly Muslim herdsmen against predominantly Christian farmers.

But analysts say these are often driven by competition for resources such as water or land rather than religion.

Militant Islamist group Boko Haram removed 276 girls from their schools in the town of Chibok in 2014.

The incident attracted international attention and sparked a global campaign aimed at their return, which included the intervention of then-US First Lady Michelle Obama.

Many have since either escaped or been released, but around 100 remain missing.