Hundreds of Pupils Feared Lacking Following Attack at Nigeria University

Hundreds of pupils in Nigeria are feared lacking after gunmen stormed a secondary college in the northern point out of Katsina, information agencies and the Nigerian authorities stated.

Gunmen rushed into the Authorities Science Secondary College in Kankara at all around 9:40 p.m. Friday, taking pictures AK-47 rifles into the air and rounding up pupils, the police in Katsina stated.

It was unclear how a lot of pupils had been kidnapped. Witnesses and officers have believed that the faculty normally holds 800 to 1,200 students. Far more than 200 students who have been kidnapped have been rescued, Isah Gambo, a police spokesman, reported Saturday in a statement.

But about 400 students remained unaccounted for, a father or mother and school worker informed the Reuters news agency, and the authorities, including the army and air force, were being working to get the lacking pupils back again.

The assault was met with resistance by the police, which allowed some pupils to scale the fence of the college and operate for basic safety and “forced the hoodlums to retreat into the forest,” Mr. Gambo stated.

The army tracked the attackers and exchanged gunfire with them in a forest in Kankara, Garba Shehu, a spokesman for President Muhammadu Buhari, stated Saturday.

No pupil casualties have been documented, despite the fact that a person officer was shot all through the attackers’ raid on the college on Friday and taken to a healthcare facility, the police claimed. The shootings about the university “sent hundreds of them fleeing and scrambling in excess of the perimeter partitions,” Mr. Shehu claimed.

It was not promptly obvious who was powering the assault. Some witnesses claimed the gunmen have been Fulani, a nomadic ethnic team in Nigeria, but the authorities have not verified these assertions.

But the assault, reminiscent of the 2014 kidnapping of schoolgirls and so shut to the execution this thirty day period of much more than 70 farmers in northeastern Nigeria by Boko Haram militants, angered Nigerians who accused the govt of not guarding its citizens. Kidnappings for ransom have happened in the location in the vicinity of the abductions.

President Buhari, who was in his household state of Katsina for a stop by when the assault occurred, on Saturday condemned “the cowardly bandits’ attack on harmless youngsters.” He directed that security be tightened all around educational facilities.

Aminu Masari, Katsina state’s governor, has purchased all colleges in the state to be closed, the neighborhood news media claimed.

On Saturday, dad and mom and relations of the lacking college students gathered at the faculty to await information.

“I have a little one and a youthful brother who’ve been taken by the kidnappers,” said Bint’a Ismael, who instructed the British Broadcasting Company on Saturday that she had been ready at the faculty considering the fact that dawn for an update.

“We are terrified here in Katsina point out,” she stated. “We never see the position of the govt.”