Boko Haram claims responsibility for abducting students in northern Nigeria

LAGOS, Nigeria — Rebels from the Boko Haram extremist team claimed accountability Tuesday for abducting hundreds of boys from a faculty in Nigeria’s northern Katsina State last week in a person of the biggest such attacks in many years, elevating fears of a increasing wave of violence in the area.

Far more than 330 pupils continue to be missing from the Govt Science Secondary School in Kankara immediately after gunmen with assault rifles attacked their school Friday night time, while scores of others managed to escape.

The government and the attackers are negotiating the fate of the boys, in accordance to Garba Shehu, a spokesman for Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari.

“The kidnappers experienced produced call and conversations have been already on, pertaining to the protection and return” of the small children to their households, explained Shehu on Twitter for the duration of talks with Katsina Gov. Aminu Masari. Neither official stated whether or not the negotiations are with Boko Haram or an additional group.

Masari mentioned stability organizations “deployed for rescue functions have also educated us that they have situated their situation.”

The Day by day Nigerian stated it gained an audio message from Boko Haram chief Abubakar Shekau saying the abduction, though there has been no independent verification of its authenticity.

The Islamic extremist team has carried out mass abduction of college students ahead of. The most severe took place in April 2014, when a lot more than 270 schoolgirls were being taken from their dormitory at the Governing administration Secondary Faculty in Chibok in northeastern Borno State. About 100 of the girls are even now missing.

In February 2014, 59 boys had been killed throughout a Boko Haram attack on the Federal Governing administration College Buni Yadi in Yobe State.

In the audio information about Friday’s assault, Shekau stated his team kidnapped the schoolboys because Western instruction is towards the tenets of Islam.

A lot more than 600 students show up at the college. Numerous were being in a position to escape in the course of a gunfight involving the attackers and the law enforcement, according to condition law enforcement spokesman Gambo Isah.

Students corroborated this account with different news organizations, stating several of them were also rounded up and pressured to stroll to a nearby forest, in which some were also capable to flee.

A number of armed groups function in northern Nigeria, where Katsina State is situated. It was at first thought that the attackers have been bandits, who from time to time do the job with Boko Haram.

Bandits have operated in the northwest area for some time, and kidnappings have elevated in modern several years. Amnesty Global suggests that additional than 1,100 people had been killed in the to start with six months of 2020 in violence similar to assaults by bandits.

A joint rescue procedure was launched Saturday by Nigeria’s law enforcement, air power and army after the army engaged in gunfights with bandits soon after locating their hideout in the Zango/Paula forest.

If Boko Haram is demonstrated to be guiding the abduction, it could signify a new wave of religious extremism is on the rise in Nigeria. For much more than 10 many years, the team has engaged in a bloody marketing campaign for introducing demanding Islamic rule, but it has been mainly active in northeast Nigeria, not in the northwest, where by Katsina Condition is positioned. 1000’s have been killed and much more than a million persons displaced by the violence.

Nnamdi Obasi of the Global Crisis Group stated a change of Boko Haram’s functions to the northwest would have critical protection implications due to the fact it could partner with other armed felony groups known to carry out assaults and collect payments from households and marketplaces.

“They are Iike mini-armies that are in a position to have out functions in defiance of the safety forces, and it is worrisome,” Obasi instructed The Associated Press.

The regional armed groups have no spiritual ideology, even so, and Obasi explained Boko Haram’s movement into the northwest would build “a chance of convergence in between legal groups and jihadist teams. The trajectories are pretty disturbing.”

Because the northwest is much more homogeneously Islam than the northeast, there are more likely recruits for radicalism.

Friday’s abduction has become a rallying cry for Nigerians fed up with escalating violence, with #BringBackOurBoys trending on Twitter as folks convey their frustrations. A similar #BringBackOurGirls became an worldwide rallying cry for the Chibok ladies.

“Before now, it has been bandits and kidnappers terrorizing our point out, but minor has been carried out to tackle the situation,” said Mallam Saidu Funtua, a member of a neighborhood civil culture business in Katsina Condition.

He extra that “the abduction of college students was the peak of it all. It is unacceptable and the govt has to do more” to defend learners and inhabitants.

The assault was a big setback for education in Katsina, which was starting to make development in enrollment, he reported, adding: “Our persons will be discouraged in sending their youngsters to school.”

Kankara villager Lawal Muhammed said the assault remaining most inhabitants terrified and traumatized.

“We have in no way expert this type of detail before,” he explained. “We want the government to do far more in defending our little ones, specifically now that universities would be resuming immediately after the COVID-19 crack.”

The abductions also come as Boko Haram and the Nigerian military may be investigated for war crimes in the rebels’ insurgency, which has lasted extra than a decade.

The Intercontinental Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor past 7 days stated a probe has identified ample evidence to benefit opening a total-scale inquiry into allegations of war crimes and crimes in opposition to humanity by Boko Haram extremists as nicely as into prices that Nigerian government forces have also perpetrated abuses.

Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda claimed there is a “reasonable basis to believe” Boko Haram and splinter groups connected to it fully commited crimes like murder, rape, sexual slavery and torture, as very well as intentionally concentrating on faculties and sites of worship and applying little one soldiers. Though a huge the greater part of the criminality in the conflict has been carried out by Boko Haram, prosecutors also uncovered grounds to imagine members of Nigeria’s stability forces experienced committed crimes, she stated.

Amnesty Intercontinental past week unveiled a report declaring at the very least 10,000 civilians have died in Nigerian armed forces custody given that 2011 following remaining detained in relationship with the Boko Haram insurgency in northern Nigeria.

– Sam Olukoya, Carly Petesch and Haruna Umar