Nigeria sends troops to rescue more than 250 kidnapped students

Security authorities in Nigeria are conducting a sweep of a huge forest in the northwest of the country in search of 287 students who were kidnapped from their school by gunmen, in one of the largest kidnapping operations in a decade .

France 24 reported today, Saturday, that no party has yet claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, but local residents blame gangs that have repeatedly carried out mass killings and kidnappings for ransom in remote villages across Nigeria .

Gunmen stormed a school in an area in northwestern Nigeria, and local residents say that the gunmen surrounded the school at a time when classes were scheduled to begin before kidnapping hundreds of people .

This kidnapping is the second mass kidnapping to occur in Nigeria, the West African country, in less than a week. The authorities explained that a rescue team had been deployed to find the kidnapped students, aged between 8 and 15 years .

It is noteworthy that this is not the first time that schools in Nigeria have been subjected to kidnappings for ransom. In 2014, the Boko Haram group kidnapped more than 200 female students in Borno State, and in 2021, gunmen kidnapped 150 children during a raid .

This comes at a time when the state is still fighting armed organizations that have been waging a rebellion in the northeast of the country for more than a decade, targeting security forces and civilians and causing the displacement of tens of people