A new tragedy in Nigeria: 42 students missing after an attack on a school.
An attack strikes Nigeria's education sector, kidnapping 42 students.
Written by: Badr Ahmed
Local sources and a senator representing the region reported on Saturday that at least 42 Nigerian students were still missing following an attack by suspected militant gunmen on a school in Borno State, northeastern Nigeria, an area plagued by an insurgency for more than 15 years.
Unknown gunmen kidnap 42 students in an attack on a school in Nigeria
Local residents said that on Friday, gunmen stormed the Musa Primary and Secondary School in the Askari-Oba area of Borno State while students were in classrooms, before abducting an unknown number of pupils.
In a subsequent statement, Senator Ali Ndume, representative of Borno South constituency, explained that school authorities had informed him of the abduction of 32 students from inside the school, in addition to 10 others who were taken from their homes near the educational institution, bringing the total number of missing students to at least 42.
Neither the Nigerian police nor the military issued any immediate comment on the incident, despite media requests for clarification regarding the circumstances of the attack.
Borno State, a vast region the size of Ireland bordering Cameroon, Chad and Niger, has been a major center of the Boko Haram insurgency since 2009, which has killed tens of thousands and displaced millions.
Although no one has yet claimed responsibility for the latest attack, the style of kidnappings targeting schools in the region resembles previous attacks carried out by Boko Haram, which gained international notoriety after kidnapping more than 270 girls from the town of Chibok in 2014, an incident that sparked widespread condemnation around the world.
The report noted that the South Borno region has not witnessed similar school kidnappings for years, while most kidnappings during the past period have been concentrated in northwestern Nigeria, where armed gangs are active in carrying out kidnappings for ransom.
In a related context, US President Donald Trump and his Nigerian counterpart Bola Tinbo announced that a joint US-Nigeria military operation resulted in the killing of Abu Bilal al-Manuki, described as the deputy leader of the global ISIS organization, in Borno State in the early hours of Saturday morning.
