Abuja-Sana
Today, 279 Nigerian schoolgirls who were kidnapped from their school in Zamfara state, northwest Nigeria, were released last Friday.
"I am delighted to announce that the girls are free now ... they have just arrived at the seat of government and they are in good health," state governor Belo Mattawali told AFP.
Last Friday, the Nigerian police announced that unidentified gunmen kidnapped 317 students from the town of Janjibi, the second kidnapping of its kind in about a week.
To that, terrorists launched an attack last night on a United Nations relief center in the city of Dikwa, in northeastern Nigeria, and surrounded a shelter where 25 aid workers took shelter.
A military source said that dozens of militants from the terrorist organization ISIS invaded the city of Dikwa and stormed a military base after the soldiers fled from it and set fire to a UN relief center, which led to its complete burning.
He added that "ISIS terrorists launched two simultaneous attacks on each of the large camp and the United Nations humanitarian center," explaining that "they burned the entire humanitarian center, but no person was injured so far, as 25 employees are still sheltering in the shelter besieged by the terrorists."
The Nigerian army sent reinforcements from the town of Marti, 40 km away, to help lift the siege on aid workers, while two fighter planes and a helicopter gunship provided air support to keep the terrorists away from the burning humanitarian center.
This attack comes three years after an attack on the 1 of March 2018 by ISIS terrorists on a United Nations humanitarian center in the city of Ran in northeastern Nigeria, killing three aid workers and kidnapping a fourth, in addition to killing eight Nigerian soldiers.
Northeast Nigeria has been plagued by terrorism and violence since the Boko Haram terrorist group launched operations against the military and civilians in 2009, killing more than 36,000 people and displacing 2 million others.
