About 340 of the kidnapped Kankara school boys have been returned on Thursday, 17 December after being abducted last week by Boko Haram from their school in Nigeria.
According to the governor of Katsina State, Governor Aminu Bello Masari, some of the boys are still missing.
“We have recovered most of the boys. It’s not all of them,” he said on state channel NTA, noting that the boys who were released were found in a forest in the neighboring Zamfara state.
Nigerian spokesman, Abdul Labaran, said in a statement the boys were being taken to Katsina city and would be reunited with their families.
The news comes shortly after a video was released Thursday purportedly showing some of the hundreds of kidnapped Nigerian schoolboys with the Boko Haram militant group.
Labaran’s statement also said that the video was authentic, but a message from the group’s leader was by an impersonator.
School bags and wares belonging to pupils at the Government Science school are seen on the floor where gunmen abducted students…
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The video, which featured Boko Haram’s logo, showed a distressed teenager surrounded by a large group of boys saying he was one of the 520 students kidnapped by the “gang of Abu Shekau.”
The raid last Friday on a school in rural Kankara was first blamed on criminals who have terrorized the area for years.
But Boko Haram subsequently claimed responsibility for the incursion, which took place hundreds of kilometers from its birthplace a decade ago in northeast Nigeria.
The Nigerian government did not immediately comment on the release of the video.
In 2014, Boko Haram abducted more than 270 girls from the northeastern Nigerian town of Chibok. Several of the girls never returned to their homes.
At least they acted quickly. I just hope they find the remaining ones. But security is a big issue.