DEVELOPMENT STORY
More than 300 boys arrive barefoot and look tired, a week after being abducted from school under attack, Boko Haram said.
More than 300 schoolboys abducted last week in an attack on their school in northwestern Nigeria have reached the state capital Katsina amid celebrations of their release.
Television pictures on Friday showed the boys, many in light green uniforms and shaving blankets, arriving on buses, looking tired but quite the opposite.
The boys were abducted last Friday after gunmen attacked the Government Science School for boys in the city of Katsina in Kankara and marched nearly 350 of them into the Rugu forest that was nearby. Boko Haram armed group claimed responsibility for the adoption.
None of the boys spoke as they walked from the bus in a single file, with soldiers on either side, into the government building.
Ahmed Idris at Al Jazeera, reporting from Katsina, said the boys walked barefoot, some limpets with blisters on their feet.
“You can see they’re pretty tired and polluted after the events of the last seven days,” he said. “You can see fear, upset, trauma,” he said, shortly after the boys walk past it when they arrived.
It was not clear if all the boys were recovered in the rescue operation, but Katsina state Governor Aminu Bello Masari told Idris on Thursday that all 344 boys had been released.
The boys were evacuated to a camp where they would undergo medical tests and an evaluation before an alleged meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari, according to Idris.
Meanwhile, a group of parents of the boys were waiting to be back with them in another part of the city.
“I couldn’t believe what I heard until neighbors came to tell me it’s true,” Hafsat Funtua, mother of 16-year-old Hamza Naziru, said earlier in a phone interview.
She said when she heard the news, she ran out of her house happily “not knowing where to go” before returning home to pray.
Another parent, Husseini Ahmed, whose 14-year-old Mohammed Husseini, was also among those abducted, said he was happy and relieved to be back with his son.
“We are delighted and sincerely expect them to return,” he said.
Details ‘kept closed’
The eviction had seized Nigeria and raised concerns and anger about insecurity and violence in the north of the country.
In an audio recording released Tuesday, a man identifying himself as the leader of Boko Haram said the group was responsible for the eviction.
On Thursday, dozens of protesters marched through the streets of the city of Katsina as #BringBackOurBoys rallied on social media from Nigeria.
The hashtag went back to a campaign launched to kidnap more than 200 girls by Boko Haram in 2014 in the northeastern city of Chibok.
It is not yet known how the boys were released. Idris said government officials were “refusing to say anything about it”.
“They claim that there has been no exchange of prisoners in exchange for the children, but many people are skeptical about that,” he said.
Criminal groups operating in northwestern Nigeria have killed more than 1,100 people in the first half of 2020 alone, according to rights group Amnesty International.
In the northeast, Boko Haram and its next phase, the Islamic State in the West African Region (ISWAP), have staged a 10-year uprising that allegedly exterminated two million people and killed more than 30,000.