The Nigerian authorities assured this Sunday, December 13 that the army was sparing its efforts to find several hundred students missing after an attack.
Gunmen on motorbikes attacked a secondary school late Friday evening in Katsina state, northern Nigeria.
Caught in the shootout between the attackers and the security forces, hundreds of students fled into the surrounding forest and some were kidnapped.
Read also: Nigeria: attack on a school in the north of the country
“
Right now, the army is confronting the bandits in the woods.
We will do everything we can to find the abducted children
, ”State Governor Aminu Bello Masari said on Sunday the day after his visit to the scene of the attack / He was unable to say how many students had been abducted.
"
The school has registered 839 students and for the moment, we have no news of 333 of them,
" said the governor.
“
Students continue to come out of the forest,
” he added, while stressing that students had testified that several of their classmates had been kidnapped by the attackers.
Unicef demands the “unconditional release of all children”
Among them was Osama Aminu Maale, 18, who managed to escape and return home.
“
The gunmen who captured us ordered the older ones to count us.
There were 520 of us,
”he told AFP by telephone.
First transported in buses, the hostages were then divided into several groups for a long walk, before the young man and four of his classmates managed to escape.
“
One of the bandits beat me several times because I couldn't keep up with the pace of the march.
He left me behind, which gave me a chance to escape,
”he explained.
Read also: Two aid workers kidnapped by jihadists in Nigeria
Since the attack, all secondary schools in Katsina State have been closed.
President Muhammadu Buhari on Saturday condemned the attack, which took place in the state where he was born, carried out by "
cowards
" and targeting "
innocent children
".
He promised to strengthen security in schools.
And Unicef demanded on Sunday "
the unconditional release of all the
abducted
children
".
Armed gangs, sometimes several hundred strong, have been sowing terror for several years in rural areas of central and northern Nigeria, practicing large-scale cattle rustling and kidnappings - sometimes massive - for ransom.