JANGEBE, Nigeria – Suwaida Sani was one of the lucky few.
When dozens of heavily armed men stormed through the gates of her boarding school, spraying bullets in the air, in the early hours of Friday morning, they asked each student’s files in the yard or to be shot.
Suwaida ran in the other direction, squatting under a mosquito net and trembling as the beams of the flashlight drew the wall above her head. When the 13-year-old came out of her hiding place the next morning, gunmen abducted more than 300 schoolmates between the ages of 11 and 17 and marched into a nearby forest. It was the largest school abduction in the history of a country where such abductions are becoming increasingly familiar.
“They were looking for someone who was hiding, but thank God they didn’t see me,” said Suwaida, who was sitting safely between her parents in the living room of their one-story house. “So many of my friends have been taken, I can’t even count the number,” she said through tears. “God spare them.”
The kidnapping of the government girls’ high school in the small town of Jangebe is the second in just over a week in northwestern Nigeria, where an increase in armed militancy has led to a worsening of security and where kidnapping for ransom has become a profitable industry.