Suspected Islamists abduct 100 schoolgirls
Print Edition
MORE than 100 female students were abducted by suspected Islamist insurgents in a night raid on a government secondary school in Nigeria’s northeast Borno state, a teacher said yesterday.
He said gunmen, believed to be members of the Boko Haram Islamist group which has attacked schools in the northeast before as part of their anti-government rebellion, carried off the students from the school in Chibok late on Monday.
“Over 100 female students in our government secondary school at Chibok have been abducted,” said Audu Musa, who teaches at another public school in the area, around 140 kilometers south of the Borno state capital Maiduguri.
Musa said he saw eight bodies in the area in the morning, but did not give the identity of the victims. “Things are very bad here and everybody is sad,” he said.
The military did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Education Commissioner for Borno State Inuwa Kubo confirmed the incident at Chibok, but said the authorities were still trying to ascertain the exact number of girls abducted, as several students fled into the bush in the darkness during the attack.
Borno state’s education authorities had last month ordered all of its schools closed to protect children, after Islamists killed dozens of pupils in a February attack against a boarding school in neighboring Yobe state.
But a Borno education official, who asked not to be named, said the female students had been back at the Chibok school taking exams.
Boko Haram, which in the Hausa language roughly means “Western education is sinful,” says it wants to carve out a separate Islamic state in Nigeria and has targeted schools, as well as churches and police and government offices, in its violent insurrection against the Nigerian state.
The raid on the school followed a bomb blast on Monday at a bus station on the outskirts of the Nigerian capital Abuja, which killed more than 70 people.
President Goodluck Jonathan said he suspected Boko Haram was behind the bombing.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
