KATSINA, Nigeria—More than 300 Nigerian boys were reunited with their parents Friday, a week after militants stormed their dormitories in one of the largest kidnappings of schoolchildren in history.
There were emotional scenes at the Hajj camp in the city of Katsina as parents and their sons clutched in tearful embraces. The schoolboys, many of whom looked dazed and exhausted after six days in captivity, had spent hours being shuttled between press conferences with local politicians and President
Muhammadu Buhari
before seeing their families shortly after nightfall.
The governor of Katsina state, Aminu Bello Masari, said all 344 kidnapped boys had been freed after their six-day captivity, a claim several of those rescued confirmed.
It wasn’t immediately clear how those statements lined up with earlier testimonies from some of their classmates who had managed to escape and said a head count done by their captors as they marched through a thick forest revealed more than 500 hostages.
One of the rescued boys,
Abdurauf Isa,
still wearing the purple-and-white-checkered school uniform of the Government Science Secondary School in Kankara, said he was relieved their ordeal had ended. “We suffered in the hands of our abductors, but they gave us food to eat,” the 16-year-old said Friday. “We ate raw local potatoes and drank water from the stream.”
Jihadist group Boko Haram, which translates to “Western education is forbidden,” has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, saying on Tuesday it had seized the students to punish them for “un-Islamic practices.” In a grainy video released Thursday, hours before the boys were freed, hostages said that some of their classmates had died during their captivity. Mr. Masari, the governor, said Friday all the captured boys were alive.
Abdurauf said he was looking forward to getting back to his studies. “My dream is to be a scientist in future,” he said. “I will continue with my education.”
Nigerian officials, including Mr. Buhari, were careful Friday not to name the group behind the boys’ abduction or provide details on how they were freed.
In an interview with state-broadcaster NTA, Mr. Buhari thanked the army, which he said had encircled the boys’ captors, without revealing their identity or explaining what happened afterward. His government repeatedly has said that its military had technically defeated Boko Haram and its affiliates,…
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