It is unclear whether others remain captive.
LONDON AND MAIDUGURI, Nigeria – Hundreds of schoolchildren abducted by gunmen in northwestern Nigeria were released last week, officials said.
After being released by Nigerian security forces in the forests of Zamfara State, 344 boys were safely sent home to neighboring Katsina State, where they will undergo medical examinations before reuniting with their families, according to Katsina State Governor Aminu Bello Masari.
“Currently, 344 of the students have been handed over to security guards,” Masari told Nigeria’s state broadcaster on Thursday night. “I think I recovered most, if not all, of the boys.”
Masari said no ransom was paid and the children’s freedom was ensured through negotiations.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari praised what he called “the spirit of partnership and collaborative efforts of the Katsina government, Zamfara and the liberating army.”
“The governor, Aminu Bello Masari, and the army have worked extremely hard,” Buhari said in a statement late Thursday. “As soon as I received the information, I congratulated them. The armed forces know their job. They were well prepared and properly motivated.”
The children are among more than 800 students enrolled in Science High School, a boarding school for boys in the rural town of Kankara in Katsina state. Armed men stormed the school grounds at midnight on December 11 and abducted hundreds of students.
Following the attack, it was believed that more than 330 students were missing, but it is still unclear exactly how many boys were taken, how many other fugitives have not yet been found and how many are still being held.
Nigerian authorities have accused the raid of a group of local “bandits”, but the jihadist group Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the attack on Tuesday.
A poorly filmed video released on Thursday bearing the Boko Haram logo allegedly showed some of the schoolchildren abducted under trees. In the clip, one of the boys, who appears visibly upset, talks to the camera and pleads with the Nigerian government to respond to the requests of their captors. He says some of his classmates were killed.
A voice in the video who claims to be Abubakar Shekau, the leader of one of Boko Haram’s factions, says his group raided the school because they believe Western education is “non-Islamic”.
However, Katsina State Governor insisted on Thursday that the bandits were responsible for the abduction, “not Boko Haram.” ABC News failed to independently verify this.
Boko Haram, whose name in the local Hausa language roughly translates to “Western education is forbidden,” has led a brutal insurgency in northeastern Nigeria since 2009, but has not previously claimed responsibility for the attacks in the northwest. The group seeks to establish an Islamic state in northeastern Nigeria, although it has spread terror across the region’s mountainous borders over the years to Niger, Chad and Cameroon, all surrounding the Lake Chad basin, where millions have been affected by violence, according to the United Nations.
Boko Haram has been targeting Nigerian schools for several years. One of the most notorious attacks occurred in April 2014, when Boko Haram fighters abducted 276 girls from their home in a boarding school in Chibok, a town in northeastern Borno State, Nigeria. Some of the girls managed to escape on their own, while others were later rescued or released after negotiations. But the fate of dozens remains unknown.
Under Shekau’s leadership, Boko Haram pledged allegiance to ISIS in 2015. Shekau and several commanders split from the group in 2016 due to ideological differences and formed their own faction.