A group of nearly 300 girls who were kidnapped from a school in north-western Nigeria last week have been released, a local official says.
The girls were abducted by unidentified gunmen from their boarding school in Jangebe, Zamfara state, on Friday and taken to a forest, police said.
The state’s governor said on Tuesday that the group had been freed and the girls were now safe.
Such kidnappings are carried out for ransom and are common in the north.
Dozens of the girls were seen gathered at a government building in Zamfara after they were taken there in a fleet of mini-buses.
Last Friday’s kidnapping of nearly 300 students from the Government Girls Science Secondary School in Jangebe, Zamfara state, which ended with their release, was the second mass kidnap from schools in less than 10 days. Twenty-seven boys and their teachers who were taken from a school in Kagara, Niger state on 17 February were released on Saturday.
The authorities say recent attacks on schools in the north-west have been carried out by “bandits”, a loose term for kidnappers, armed robbers, cattle rustlers, Fulani herdsmen and other armed militia operating in the region who are largely motivated by money.
