KURIGA: Rashidat Hamza is in despair. All but one of her six children are among the nearly 300 students abducted from their school in Nigeria’s Kuriga town of Kaduna, riddled with Islamic extremists and armed gangs. She was still in shock Saturday.
Authorities said at least 100 children aged 12 or younger were among the abductees in the state known for violent killings and lawlessness.
The mass kidnapping in Kuriga was the third in northern Nigeria since last week; a group of gunmen abducted 15 children from a school in Sokoto before dawn Saturday, and a few days earlier 200 people, mostly kids and women, were kidnapped in Borno.
No group claimed responsibility for any of the recent abductions. But Islamic extremists waging an insurgency in the northeast are suspected of carrying out the kidnapping in Borno. Locals blame the school abductions on herders who are in conflict with the settled communities.
Nigerian police and soldiers headed into the forests to search for the missing children, but combing the wooded expanses of northwestern Nigeria could take weeks, observers said.