Bombay Durpun - 24 Nigerian girls freed after school kidnapping

Nigeria has suffered a string of abductions of schoolchildren since Islamist group Boko Haram kidnapped 276 girls in Chibok in the restive northeast in 2014, sparking an international outcry.

"President Bola Tinubu has welcomed the release today of the 24 schoolgirls abducted by terrorists in Maga," Kebbi State, on November 17, said a statement from Bayo Onanuga, special adviser to the Nigerian president.

Authorities had said a gang armed with "sophisticated weapons, shooting sporadically" attacked the school overnight, leaving a school official dead and a security guard injured.

The assailants had kidnapped 25 girls, but one was able to escape soon after, authorities said.

While applauding security agents, Tinubu has requested they "make more efforts to rescue the remaining students still being held captive", Tuesday's statement said.

The Kebbi attack triggered other "copycat kidnappings" over the past week, it added.

- Fresh attacks -

Earlier Tuesday, police said gunmen seized 10 women and children in an overnight raid in the western state of Kwara.

That raid targeted the village of Isapa, which neighbours another village where at least 35 people were kidnapped a week before.

Last week, armed gangs also seized more than 300 children from a Catholic school in Nigeria's north-central Niger state and 13 girls in the eastern state of Borno.

Africa's most populous country is facing a long-running security crisis fuelled by jihadist attacks and violence by "bandit" gangs that raid villages, kill people and kidnap for ransom.

US President Donald Trump earlier this month threatened military action over what he described as the "mass slaughter" of Nigeria's Christians -- a claim the Nigerian government rejects.

Long-brewing conflicts in the religiously diverse country of 230 million people have killed both Christians and Muslims, often indiscriminately.

Kwara state police commissioner Ojo Adekimi said the attackers in the latest raid were herders who had "shot sporadically" and seized women and children from local farming families.

"There is a manhunt for them. Policemen are in the bush with local hunters," he told AFP.

One woman managed to escape and return to the village, he said.

The raid comes one week after gunmen killed two people and kidnapped at least 35 worshippers in an attack on a church in Eruku, around 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Isapa.

The abducted worshippers have since returned home.

- 'Need my child back' -

Parents of children kidnapped in the Catholic school raid said they were desperate for their release.

At least 50 victims taken from the school, St Mary's, managed to escape, but more than 265 children and teachers are still being held.

"My son is a small boy. He doesn't even know how to talk," said Michael Ibrahim.

His son, who is four, suffers from asthma, he said.

"We don't know the condition in which the boy is," said Ibrahim, adding the abduction had so sickened his wife that she had to be taken to hospital.

Some of the children abducted are nursery-school age.

"I need my child back. I need my child back. If I had the power to bring my child back, I would do it," another father, Sunday Isaiku, told AFP.

Four days after the St Mary's children were taken, no group has claimed the abduction or contacted the school demanding a ransom.

- 'Vile attacks' -

Global conflict monitoring group ACLED has recorded 42 incidents of violence targeting students in Nigeria this year, a decline from 71 in 2024.

About 40 percent of the abductions involved demands for ransom.

The World Food Programme meanwhile warned that jihadist attacks and instability were pushing hunger to unprecedented levels in northern Nigeria.

Nearly 35 million people are projected to face "severe food insecurity" in the region in 2026, it said, with around 15,000 expected to face "famine-like conditions" in hard-hit Borno state.

F.Varghese--BD