*More than 300 students are missing after gunmen raided the Government Science Secondary School for boys in Nigeria on Friday.
The school is located in Kankara, in the northwestern part of the country. When the school was attacked, police engaged in a gunfight with the gunmen, allowing many students to run for safety, according to Katsina State police spokesman Gambo Isah.
The school has more than 600 students and according to reports, half are missing following the raid, assumed to be victims of a mass kidnapping.
One of the lucky ones to escape was Usama Aminu, and he’s speaking out about the harrowing ordeal.
“When I decided to run they brought a knife to slaughter me but I ran away quickly,” he said, per US News and World Report.
“They said they would kill whoever is trying to escape then I began to run, climbing one rock to another through a forest,” Aminu added.
READ MORE: NIGERIA – Police Brutality at 60
More than 300 students are still unaccounted for after gunmen attacked a school in northern Nigeria over the weekend, a government official says https://t.co/fj9tLfPzJ5
— CNN Africa (@CNNAfrica) December 14, 2020
Many details of the raid remain unknown, such as who orchestrated the event. No terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the incident.
A spokesman for Katsina state said 17 more students had been found on Monday, leaving about 320 students still missing.
Another escapee, Muhammad Abubakar, 15, said he was among 72 boys who reached safety in the village of Kaikaibise.
“The bandits called us back. They told us not to run. We started to walk back to them, but as we did, we saw more people coming towards the dormitory,” he told Reuters.
“So I and others ran again. We jumped over the fence and ran through a forest to the nearest village.”
Oby Ezekwesili, an activist and former government minister, said the raid on the all-boys school was the result of poor governance.
“Nothing of our government system was available to protect those children,” she told Reuters. “What else can define poor governance.”
