Nigeria: 133 high school students kidnapped by gunmen in Kaduna state

Nigerian soldiers on patrol, October 12, 2019 (illustrative image).

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In Nigeria, another kidnapping of high school students hit Kaduna state in the center of the country.

According to our information, 133 students were kidnapped overnight from Sunday to Monday, July 5.

Hundreds of women demonstrated on Sunday to protest the state's lack of protection.

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Around two in the morning on the night of Sunday to Monday, several armed men climbed the gates of the boarding school of Bethel Secondary School Baptist High School.

180 high school students aged 12 to 18 were educated there and were in the midst of exams.

Once inside, the kidnappers shot everywhere and gathered the children and staff in the courtyard of the facility.

There was then an exchange of fire with members of the security responsible for protecting the establishment, but several of them were injured and the attackers were able to leave with the majority of the students.

According to the vice-president of the school whom we were able to reach, 26 teenagers then took advantage of the confusion to escape.

He therefore claims that a total of 133 young adolescents, boys and girls, have disappeared.

On Monday afternoon, according to local media, hundreds of women, including parents of Bethel school students, blocked the road connecting Kaduna - the state capital - to the south of the province, in protest against the incessant kidnappings of their children.

They denounced the lack of protection of the authorities vis-à-vis the country's students and demanded that the bandits who carry out the kidnappings be arrested.

Attacks of this type have increased in Nigeria in recent months, with more than 1,000 children abducted since last December.

Most of the time the objective is to obtain a ransom under the threat of executing the captured students, but the governor of Kaduna State is notorious for refusing any type of dealings with the bandits who carry out these kidnappings.  

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