After her son was kidnapped from their school in the northern Katsina state last week, a Nigerian woman joined the protest on Tuesday, pleading for the return of his only son, as he was included among 330 boys who went missing after the mass abduction that was reportedly executed by the Boko Haram, as the jihadist rebel group reportedly claimed the responsibility for the incident.
On Friday, the Government Science Secondary School (GSSS), which is an all-boys boarding school in the town of Kankara, was surrounded by Hundreds of gunmen with assault rifles and fired at police before they rounded up students and forced them to march through the heavily forested region in separated groups based on the statements of the witnesses.
According to the Daily Nigerian, they received an audio message on Tuesday from Abubakar Shekau, the Boko Haram leader, that his group has abducted the schoolboys because Western education is against the tenets of Islam.
Based on the recording shared by the media company, Shekau stated that what happened in Katsina was done in order to promote Islam and discourage the public of any un-Islamic practices as Western education is primarily not the kind of education that is permitted by Allah and his Holy Prophet.
Despite the audio message not being independently verified, it is not the first time that Shekau has done it as he had sent and released also audio and video messages on behalf of Boko Haram in the past, Aljazeera reported.
The mother of the abducted child, Amrata Hamza, shared to a local broadcaster during a protest organized on Tuesday that she does not know the condition of her son.
She also added that she was speechless, and has not even drunk water since she arrived in Kankara.
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Amrata Hamza also shared that there is much sunlight, and she knows that their children are thirsty and hungry that is why they are pleading to get their kids back.
According to the Associated Press, the Nigerian government stated that a joint rescue operation was launched on Saturday by the state police, air force, and army after the military started to engage in gunfights with bandits after locating their hideout in the Zango/Paula forest.
The Newsagency also added that a number of the initial 600 male students who were taken from the school escaped their captors, however, more than 330 remained unaccounted for as of Tuesday.
Abukakar Umar, who is a senior student at GSSS shared during an interview that they were inside the hostel when they were able to hear gunshots, he even stated that he heard someone saying that their security guard has been killed, and when they went out, lights were flashed at them so when they were approached by the armed men with gunshots, they ran into the bush because bullets were shot directly to them but luckily they were able to find a safe place, wherein they spent hours and slept there, Time reported.
Umar also added that because of the ongoing security risk, he was not sure of returning back to school.
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