In another neighborhood of hell
Nigerian security forces are searching for more than 200 children abducted from their school by gunmen on motorcycles Thursday, in the latest mass kidnapping to hit Nigeria.
Officials and witnesses have given varying figures of the number of students taken from the school in Kuriga, a town in northwestern Nigeria, with between 200 and 300 children reported to be missing, some of them as young as 8 years old.
It was the second such abduction in Nigeria in a week, after around another 200 people — mainly women and children — were kidnapped by militants in Borno state in the country’s northeast.
“Militants”? Funny kind of militancy.
If the higher total this week is confirmed, it could surpass the mass abduction in 2014 when Boko Haram militants kidnapped 276 schoolgirls from their dormitory in the village of Chibok.
The West African nation has been struggling to contain the kidnapping epidemic for a number of years now. More than 3,600 people were abducted between July 2022 and June 2023, according to Nigeria based SBM Intelligence group. But the actual number could be far higher, as many people do not report kidnappings for fear of reprisals.
Read the rest at your peril – it gets worse and worse.
