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Over 300 students still missing after Nigeria school attack, Abubakar Shekau claims it
[Al Ahram] Anxiety is growing among the parents of hundreds of students who remain missing three days after button men attacked their school in Katsina State in northern Nigeria.

More than 300 students are missing after the attack on the Government Science Secondary School, a boys' school in Kankara, on Friday night, Katsina governor Aminu Masari said.

A joint rescue operation was launched Saturday by Nigeria's police, air force and army, according to the government. The military was in shootouts with the bandidos after locating their hideout in the Zango/Paula forest Saturday, according to a statement by President Muhammadu Buhari.

When the school was attacked, police engaged in a shootout with the button men, allowing many students to scale the school's fence and run for safety, according to Katsina State police front man Gambo Isah.

The school has more than 600 students.

Salish Masi said that two of his sons are among those still missing.

``I am worried that after three days I have no news about my children,'' he told The News Agency that Dare Not be Named Monday. ``I have been waiting for the authorities to tell me what happened but till now, they have said nothing.''

Another parent, Mustapha Gargaba, said he is very anxious because he does not know what has happened to his son.

No group or persons have grabbed credit for the abduction of the students, the Katsina state governor said after meeting with security officials.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres
...Portuguese politician and diplomat, ninth Secretary-General of the United Nations. Previously, he was the UN High Commissioner for Refugees between 2005 and 2015. He was the Prime Minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002 and was the Secretary-General of the Socialist Party from 1992 to 2002. He served as President of the Socialist International from 1999 to 2005. In both a 2012 and 2014 poll, the Portuguese public ranked him as the best Prime Minister of the previous 30 years...
 Monday condemned the attack on the school and called ``for the immediate and unconditional release of the kidnapped children and for their safe return to their families,'' in a statement issued in New York.

Several gangs operate in northwestern Nigeria where Katsina state is located.

More than 1,100 people have been killed by bandidos in an escalation of attacks during the first half of the year, according to Amnesia Amnesty International, which said the government was failing to bring the attackers to justice.

While several groups of bandidos are active there, the groups known to kidnap for ransom have links to the jihadist group Boko Haram
... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality...
 and its breakaway faction, the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
's West Africa Province, known as ISWAP.

Both Boko Haram and ISWAP have in the past carried out mass abduction of students. The most serious school attack took place in April 2014, when more than 270 schoolgirls were kidnapped from their dormitory at the Government Secondary School in Chibok in northeastern Borno State. About 100 of the girls are still missing.

The recent incident at the Government Science Secondary School in Kankara, is the worst attack on a boys school since February 2014, when 59 boys were killed during a Boko Haram attack on the Federal Government College Buni Yadi in Yobe State.

Boys escaped after gunmen abducted their friends at Nigeria school
Another perspective.
[Jpost] The president's office said on Monday the government was in contact with the gunnies and was negotiating the release of the boys after security agencies had located them.

Osama Aminu was one of the lucky ones. He managed to escape when button men kidnapped more than 300 pupils from his school in northwestern Nigeria.

"When I decided to run they brought a knife to slaughter me but I bravely ran away quickly," he said, sitting on a mat and speaking softly as he described how he had been in bed at the all-boys school in Kankara when he heard gunshots on Friday night.

At first, he said, the boys thought the commotion was from soldiers trying to protect them, but the attackers, armed with AK-47s, were already inside the building, threatening groups who tried to leave their dormitories at the Government Science secondary school in an attack that has outraged Nigerians.
"They said they would kill whoever is trying to escape then I began to run, climbing one rock to another through a forest," Aminu said.

Many details of the raid and its aftermath remain unknown.

Police said on Friday they exchanged fire with the attackers, allowing some students to run for safety. According to Katsina Governor Aminu Bello Masari on Sunday, 333 students remained missing.

The president's office said on Monday the government was in contact with the gunnies and was negotiating the release of the boys after security agencies had located them.

"We are making progress and the outlook is positive," Masari told news hounds on Monday, after meeting President Muhammadu Buhari, who was on a week-long visit to his home state.

The governor said the president was fully committed to the rescue of the schoolchildren, after he had been criticized in Nigerian newspapers for not visiting the school.

It is still not clear who the button men were and officials do not yet know the motive of the attack.

Attacks by armed gangs, widely known as bandidos, are common throughout northwestern Nigeria. The groups attack civilians, stealing or kidnapping them for ransom.

ANGER
Muhammad Abubakar, 15, was another pupil who got away, trekking through farmland and a forest in the dark. He said he was among 72 boys who had reached safety in the village of Kaikaibise where he ended up.

"The bandidos called us back. They told us not to run. We started to walk back to them, but as we did, we saw more people coming towards the dormitory," he told Rooters.

"So I and others ran again. We jumped over the fence and ran through a forest to the nearest village."

Abubakar, one of eight children, said he saw a number of boys being rounded up before they were marched out of the school, which has around 800 students. Seven of his friends are missing. As he was reunited with his mother, who sells firewood for a living, he said: "I never thought I would see my parents again."

Friday's raid evoked memories of the 2014 kidnap of more than 200 girls from a school in the northeastern town of Chibok by Islamist group Boko Haram. Since then, about half of those girls have been found or freed, dozens have been paraded in propaganda videos and an unknown number are believed to have died.

Despite the measures taken to find the boys and track down the assailants, there was growing anger at the precarious security situation in the country. On Monday, #BringBackOurBoys was trending on Twitter.

Late last month, Islamist faceless myrmidons killed scores of farmers in northeastern Borno, beheading some of them.

And in October the country was gripped by some of the worst civil unrest since its return to civilian rule in 1999, following weeks of largely peaceful protests against police brutality in which several demonstrators were rubbed out.

Boko Haram Claims Kidnapping of Hundreds of Nigerian Students
[AnNahar] Jihadist group Boko Haram on Tuesday claimed responsibility for the abduction of hundreds of school students in northwest Nigeria.

"I am Abubakar Shekau and our brothers are behind the kidnapping in Katsina," said the leader of the group behind the 2014 abduction of hundreds of schoolgirls in Chibok, in a voice message.
Posted by: Fred 2020-12-15
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=590058