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At least 50 of the more than 300 children snatched by gunmen from a Catholic school in Nigeria have escaped their captors, a Christian group said today.

Separately, the country’s leader announced the rescue of 38 worshippers seized in a different attack last week.

Gunmen at the weekend raided St Mary’s co-education school in Niger state, taking 303 children and 12 teachers in one of the largest mass kidnappings in Nigeria.

The abduction came days after gunmen stormed a secondary school in neighbouring Kebbi state, taking 25 girls last week.

Gunmen also raided a church in Kwara state in an attack that was recorded and broadcast online, showing the service being interrupted by gunfire, worshippers fleeing and screaming being heard outside.

Two people were killed in that attack, but the 38 worshippers who were abducted were later rescued by security forces, President Bola Tinubu said today on his X account.

Separately, the Christian Association of Nigeria said in a statement that “we have received some good news as 50 (St Mary’s) pupils escaped and have reunited with their parents”.

The number of boys and girls - aged between 8 and 18 years - kidnapped from St Mary’s is almost half of the school’s student population of more than 600.

The Nigerian Government has not commented on the number of children taken from the school, but Tinubu said in his X posting that “51 out of the missing” Catholic school students “have been recovered”.

He vowed: “I will not relent and under my watch, we will secure this nation and protect our people”.

Mounting security fears in Africa’s most populous nation have sparked a wave of school closures across some parts of the country.

Since Islamist militants kidnapped nearly 300 schoolgirls from Chibok town more than a decade ago, Nigeria has struggled with a spate of mass kidnappings, mostly carried out by criminal gangs looking for ransom payments.

Armed gangs often attack remote boarding schools where they know a lack of security presence will make for soft targets. Most victims are released after negotiations.

‘Deep sorrow’

Pope Leo XIV made “a heartfelt appeal for the immediate release of the hostages”.

He expressed his “deep sorrow, especially for the many young boys and girls kidnapped and for their anguished families”, at the end of the Angelus prayer.

The two abduction operations and the church attack came as United States President Donald Trump threatened military action over what he called the persecution of Christians by radical Islamists in Nigeria.

When asked about the recent attacks and kidnappings on Fox ��һ�ǿ����� Radio, Trump said “what’s happening in Nigeria is a disgrace”.

Nearly a week after their capture, two dozen schoolgirls in neighbouring Kebbi state are still missing.

Security forces have identified locations where they are thought to be held, according to a security source. Only one of the 25 girls managed to escape early in the week.

Meanwhile, 13 women and girls aged between 16 and 23 were kidnapped in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno state while walking home from their farms at the weekend, a local official told AFP.

One was later freed after she said she was married.

“They are all Muslim,” said Abubakar Mazhinyi, chairman of the Askira-Uba district, adding the area where they were taken from is 20km from Sambisa Forest, a game reserve turned jihadist enclave in Borno state.

Beyond the kidnapping gangs, Nigeria is also dealing with a deadly Islamist insurgency in the northeast of the country, where the violence has killed more than 40,000 people and displaced around two million since it erupted in 2019.

Aisha Yesufu, co-founder of the #BringBackOurGirls group movement which led the campaign for the release of the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram 11 years ago, said kidnappings continues because “authorities are doing nothing” to curb the crisis.

-Agence France-Presse