NIGERIA: Boko Haram claims abduction of students in northern Nigeria

Parents of the missing Government Science secondary school students wait for news on their children in Kankara , Nigeria, Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2020. Rebels from the Boko Haram extremist group claimed responsibility Tuesday for abducting hundreds of boys from a school in Nigeria's northern Katsina State last week in one of the largest such attacks in years, raising fears of a growing wave of violence in the region. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

 

Rebels from the Boko Haram extremist group claimed responsibility Tuesday for abducting hundreds of boys from a school in Nigeria’s northern Katsina State last week in one of the largest such attacks in years, raising fears of a growing wave of violence in the region.

More than 330 students remain missing from the Government Science Secondary School in Kankara after gunmen with assault rifles attacked their school Friday night, although scores of others managed to escape.

People inspect a wall and metal door broken by rebels from Boko Haram who kidnapped Government Science Secondary School students in Kankara, Nigeria, Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2020. Rebels from the Boko Haram extremist group claimed responsibility Tuesday for abducting hundreds of boys from a school in Nigeria's northern Katsina State last week in one of the largest such attacks in years, raising fears of a growing wave of violence in the region. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

The government and the attackers are negotiating the fate of the boys, according to Garba Shehu, a spokesman for Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari.

“The kidnappers had made contact and discussions were already on, pertaining to the safety and return” of the children to their homes, said Shehu on Twitter during talks with Katsina Gov. Aminu Masari. Neither official said whether the negotiations are with Boko Haram or another group.

Parents of the missing Government Science secondary school students wait for news on their children in Kankara , Nigeria, Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2020. Rebels from the Boko Haram extremist group claimed responsibility Tuesday for abducting hundreds of boys from a school in Nigeria's northern Katsina State last week in one of the largest such attacks in years, raising fears of a growing wave of violence in the region. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

Masari said security agencies “deployed for rescue operations have also informed us that they have located their position.”

The Daily Nigerian said it received an audio message from Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau claiming the abduction, although there has been no independent verification of its authenticity.

People work past an empty hostel of missing Government Science Secondary School students in Kankara, Nigeria, Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2020. Rebels from the Boko Haram extremist group claimed responsibility Tuesday for abducting hundreds of boys from a school in Nigeria's northern Katsina State last week in one of the largest such attacks in years, raising fears of a growing wave of violence in the region. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

The Islamic extremist group has carried out mass abduction of students before. The most serious took place in April 2014, when more than 270 schoolgirls were taken from their dormitory at the Government Secondary School in Chibok in northeastern Borno State. About 100 of the girls are still missing.

In February 2014, 59 boys were killed during a Boko Haram attack on the Federal Government College Buni Yadi in Yobe State.

In the audio message about Friday’s attack, Shekau said his group abducted the schoolboys because Western education is against the tenets of Islam.

Parents of the missing Government Science secondary school students wait for news on their children in Kankara , Nigeria, Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2020. Rebels from the Boko Haram extremist group claimed responsibility Tuesday for abducting hundreds of boys from a school in Nigeria's northern Katsina State last week in one of the largest such attacks in years, raising fears of a growing wave of violence in the region. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

More than 600 students attend the school. Many were able to escape during a gunfight between the attackers and the police, according to state police spokesman Gambo Isah.

Students corroborated this account with various news agencies, saying many of them were also rounded up and forced to walk to a nearby forest, where some were also able to flee.

Several armed groups operate in northern Nigeria, where Katsina State is located. It was originally believed that the attackers were bandits, who sometimes work with Boko Haram.

People travel past Government Science Secondary School in Kankara, Nigeria, Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2020. Rebels from the Boko Haram extremist group claimed responsibility Tuesday for abducting hundreds of boys from the school in Nigeria's northern Katsina State last week in one of the largest such attacks in years, raising fears of a growing wave of violence in the region. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

Bandits have operated in the northwest region for some time, and kidnappings have increased in recent years. Amnesty International says that more than 1,100 people were killed in the first six months of 2020 in violence related to attacks by bandits.

A joint rescue operation was launched Saturday by Nigeria’s police, air force and army after the military engaged in gunfights with bandits after locating their hideout in the Zango/Paula forest.

Police officers drive past the Government Science Secondary School in Kankara, Nigeria, Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2020. Rebels from the Boko Haram extremist group claimed responsibility Tuesday for abducting hundreds of boys from a school in Nigeria's northern Katsina State last week in one of the largest such attacks in years, raising fears of a growing wave of violence in the region. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

If Boko Haram is proven to be behind the abduction, it could mean a new wave of religious extremism is on the rise in Nigeria. For more than 10 years, the group has engaged in a bloody campaign for introducing strict Islamic rule, but it has been mainly active in northeast Nigeria, not in the northwest, where Katsina State is located. Thousands have been killed and more than a million people displaced by the violence.

Nnamdi Obasi of the International Crisis Group said a shift of Boko Haram’s activities to the northwest would have serious security implications because it could partner with other armed criminal groups known to carry out attacks and collect payments from households and markets.

Parents of the missing Government Science secondary school students wait for news on their children in Kankara , Nigeria, Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2020. Rebels from the Boko Haram extremist group claimed responsibility Tuesday for abducting hundreds of boys from a school in Nigeria's northern Katsina State last week in one of the largest such attacks in years, raising fears of a growing wave of violence in the region. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

“They are Iike mini-armies that are able to carry out operations in defiance of the security forces, and it is worrisome,” Obasi told The Associated Press.

The local armed groups have no religious ideology, however, and Obasi said Boko Haram’s movement into the northwest would create “a risk of convergence between criminal groups and jihadist groups. The trajectories are very disturbing.”

Because the northwest is more homogeneously Islam than the northeast, there are more potential recruits for radicalism.

Two women walk past the Government Science Secondary School in Kankara, Nigeria, Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2020. Rebels from the Boko Haram extremist group claimed responsibility Tuesday for abducting hundreds of boys from a school in Nigeria's northern Katsina State last week in one of the largest such attacks in years, raising fears of a growing wave of violence in the region. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

Friday’s abduction has become a rallying cry for Nigerians fed up with growing violence, with #BringBackOurBoys trending on Twitter as people express their frustrations. A similar #BringBackOurGirls became an international rallying cry for the Chibok girls.

“Before now, it has been bandits and kidnappers terrorizing our state, but little has been done to address the situation,” said Mallam Saidu Funtua, a member of a local civil society organization in Katsina State.

He added that “the abduction of students was the height of it all. It is unacceptable and the government has to do more” to protect students and residents.

The attack was a major setback for education in Katsina, which was beginning to make progress in enrollment, he said, adding: “Our people will be discouraged in sending their kids to school.”

Kankara villager Lawal Muhammed said the attack left most residents terrified and traumatized.

“We have never experienced this kind of thing before,” he said. “We want the government to do more in protecting our children, especially now that schools would be resuming after the COVID-19 break.”

The abductions also come as Boko Haram and the Nigerian military may be investigated for war crimes in the rebels’ insurgency, which has lasted more than a decade.

The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor last week said a probe has found enough evidence to merit opening a full-scale inquiry into allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity by Boko Haram extremists as well as into charges that Nigerian government forces have also perpetrated abuses.

Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said there is a “reasonable basis to believe” Boko Haram and splinter groups linked to it committed crimes including murder, rape, sexual slavery and torture, as well as intentionally targeting schools and places of worship and using child soldiers. While a vast majority of the criminality in the conflict has been carried out by Boko Haram, prosecutors also found grounds to believe members of Nigeria’s security forces had committed crimes, she said.

Amnesty International last week released a report saying at least 10,000 civilians have died in Nigerian military custody since 2011 after being detained in connection with the Boko Haram insurgency in northern Nigeria.

 

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Students in Burkina Faso says to fear extremists more than COVID-19

Balkissa Barro’s been waiting for months to go back to school, but now that she has, the 10-year-old fears classes might once again stop.

Children returning to school in Burkina Faso’s volatile Sahel region have to practice safety drills to prepare for potential jihadist attacks that have ravaged the West African nation, killing more than 2,000 people this year. For Barro, the simulation of dropping to the ground and hiding under desks brings up memories of when gunmen stormed her village last year and killed seven relatives, forcing her family to flee.

“I’m afraid of being chased away from school,” said Barro as she slung a bag on her back and walked hesitantly to class in Dori town, where she now lives.

In Burkina Faso, worries over the COVID-19 pandemic come second to threats of attacks by extremists linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.

More than 5 million children have been affected by school closures in the country due to coronavirus and violence, according to the U.N. Even as schools began to reopen in October, many remained shut due to insecurity, especially in hard-hit regions like the Sahel, the epicenter of the crisis.

Some 65% of the region’s more than 1,000 schools are closed, according to the U.N, and those that are functioning lack the resources to open safely.

President Roch Marc Christian Kabore, who has been declared the winner of last week’s election and will serve another five years, has promised that his next term would focus on empowering women and youth.

On a visit to Dori last month, one of the last safe havens in the region, educators told The Associated Press that the number of students in class had doubled due to the influx of internally displaced people, putting the teacher to student ratio at one to 100 children.

Physical distancing is impossible. Students sit crammed in makeshift tented classrooms, poking their heads through the cracks for fresh air.

While the government earlier this year said it was procuring 12 million masks and soap for students, teachers in Dori said they have not received anything. At Wendou school, 1,400 children use 14 hand-washing stations and no one has masks, said Dofiko Kone, the headmaster.

But, like the students, he’s more concerned about the violence than the pandemic.

“It is really difficult for children, because there are children who saw their parents killed in front of them, there are children who ran away and couldn’t even take anything with them, they have nothing to eat, there are children who are here without families,” he said.

Humanitarians warn that the combination of overcrowded and shuttered schools is shrinking available safe spaces for children. Organizations need to find new ways of teaching in emergencies, so that children can “get a foot in the door before it shuts on their future,” said Tom Peyre-Costa, spokesman for the Norwegian Refugee Council.

UNICEF launched educational radio programs and online teaching to reach children unable to attend class, said Hamadou Diallo, head of education for the group in Dori. UNICEF is also providing tents, desks and school materials, but it’s short 75% of this year’s funding, or some $72 million dollars.

Education in Burkina Faso has been under attack since violence engulfed the country after the ouster of long time President Blaise Compaore in 2014, which left a security vacuum. Human Rights Watch documented more than 120 attacks and threats against students, teachers and schools by Islamist groups opposing the country’s secular curriculum between 2017 and 2020, according to a report in May.

At least 13 schools were burned in Tansarga commune in the east in July and September, and more than 40% of schools in the Sahel’s Oudalan province were destroyed, according to an October report from ACAPS, a humanitarian analysis organization.

While struggling families in the Sahel are happy their children can continue learning, many still can’t shelter or feed them.

Hama Ousseni Diallo’s been living in a makeshift displacement site on the outskirts of Dori since he was chased from his village by gunmen one year ago. When the pandemic hit, he sent six of his children — the youngest was 8 — to work in a restaurant so they wouldn’t starve because they were no longer being fed at school, he said.

Although they’ve now returned to class, school meals haven’t yet started and the little support he gets from aid groups is not enough to sustain them.

“The children go to school but when they come back ... there is no food, there is no place to sleep,” he said.

 

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Kenya school attacked by al-Shabab, 4 students killed

Suspected al-Shabab fighters attacked a primary school in Garissa county near the border with Somalia.

At least four students have been killed by suspected fighters from the armed group al-Shabab at a school in northern Kenya.

It comes as the United States boosts its military presence in the country, deploying additional soldiers to the Manda Bay airbase after al-Shabab staged an attack there on Sunday.

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