Few days after some students were freed from the captivity of abductors, on Wednesday, it was an unfortunate incident as unknown armed men kidnapped a set of 73 students in their abode of learning in Zamfara, a northwestern state in Nigeria.
According to Zamfara state police spokesman Mohammed Shehu, he said the attackers stormed the Government Day Secondary School located in the remote village of Kaya, where they abducted the students from.
He added that a rescue operation was ongoing to free the students.
The northern part of Nigeria has been inundated with incessant kidnap cases which speculating had sum up to more than 1,000 students from schools since December.
The gunmen have demanded large ransom payments from parents, and while most pupils ultimately have been released, some have died or been killed in captivity.
However, the headteacher at one of the schools in Niger state told The Associated Press many parents sold most of what they owned in an effort to raise funds. The Salihu Tanko Islamiya School also sold off a piece of land where they had planned an expansion project, he added.
Those 90 pupils freed were the youngest hostages ever taken from a school in Nigeria, with children as young as 4 taken into the remote forests by gunmen and held for three months without their parents. One child, who hasn’t been identified, died during the ordeal, authorities said last week.
The increasing rate of abductions in Nigeria’s north has forced some state governments to temporarily close down some schools as they struggle to find a means of ensuring sufficient security in areas where there is usually not an adequate police presence.
