Nigeria: witnesses, 'over 200 children kidnapped yesterday' - Breaking news. There were more than two hundred, according to some witnesses at least 280, children between the ages of 8 and 15 kidnapped yesterday during a raid on a school in north-west Nigeria.
Kidnappings for ransom are common in Africa's most populous country, where heavily armed criminal gangs have targeted educational institutions in the past. Thursday's abduction also comes nearly a decade after Boko Haram jihadists sparked international outrage by kidnapping more than 250 schoolgirls from Chibok, northeast Nigeria.