At least 42 Nigerian school children were missing on Saturday a day after suspected Islamist militants attacked a school in the insurgency-hit northeastern Borno state, a senator for the area said.
Residents said on Friday that armed men abducted an unknown number of students from Mussa Primary and Junior Secondary School in Askira-Uba Local Government Area while classes were in session.
Ali Ndume, senator for Borno South district, where the school is located, said in a statement that school authorities informed him that 32 students were abducted from the school while another 10 were seized from their homes close to the school.
Nigeria’s police and military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Borno – an area the size of Ireland that borders Cameroon, Chad and Niger – remains the epicentre of an insurgency by the Boko Haram Islamist militant group that has lasted more than 15 years.
No group has claimed responsibility for Friday’s attack, though Boko Haram has carried out similar abductions in the past.
Borno South senatorial district is where Boko Haram kidnapped more than 270 girls in the town of Chibok in 2014, drawing outrage around the world. The state had not witnessed another school kidnapping since.
Most school kidnappings have taken place in the northwest of the country, where armed criminal gangs carry out abductions for ransom.
Separately, U.S. President Donald Trump and his Nigerian counterpart Bola Tinubu said a U.S. and Nigerian military operation had killed Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, the second in command of ISIS globally in Borno in the early hours of Saturday.
Al-Minuki has been killed in an operation conducted by U.S. and Nigerian forces in the northeast of the African country, Trump and Tinubu said.
Trump announced the strike in a Truth Social post late on Friday in the United States, with Tinubu on Saturday describing it as a “significant example of effective collaboration in the fight against terrorism”.
“Tonight, at my direction, brave American forces and the Armed Forces of Nigeria flawlessly executed a meticulously planned and very complex mission to eliminate the most active terrorist in the world from the battlefield.
Abu-Bilal al-Minuki… thought he could hide in Africa, but little did he know we had sources who kept us informed on what he was doing,” Trump said on Truth Social.
In a statement posted on X, Tinubu said early assessments confirmed the elimination of al-Minuki — also known as Abu-Mainok — along with several of his lieutenants, during a strike on his compound in the Lake Chad Basin.
Tinubu said Nigerian forces worked closely with the U.S. military in what he called a daring joint operation that dealt a heavy blow to the ranks of the Islamic State. Trump, who has previously accused Nigeria of failing to protect Christians from Islamist militants, thanked the Nigerian government for its partnership in the operation.
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