Ninety children held captive by gunmen for three months in northern Nigeria were waiting to be reunited with their families after being freed.
One of the 91 children taken in May died during the ordeal and four others were receiving medical treatment, officials told reporters.
Girls as young as five draped in long hijabs and boys wearing new clothes stepped off a minibus and filed past photographers in Minna, the capital of Niger state. Their arrival came hours after the school’s headteacher announced news of their release.
The children were served meals and greeted by Niger state governor Abubakar Sani Bello.
Gunmen on motorbikes attacked the Salihu Tanko Islamic School in Niger state in late May.
Other preschool children were left behind as they could not keep pace when the gunmen hurriedly moved those abducted into the forest.
Headteacher Abubakar Garba Alhassan did not provide details of the children’s release, but parents of the students have over the past weeks struggled to raise the ransoms demanded by their abductors.
More than 1,000 students have been forcibly taken from their schools in a series of abductions this year, according to the Associated Press. Although most of those kidnapped have been released, at least 200 are still held by their abductors.
Nigeria’s government has been unable to halt the spate of abductions for ransom. As a result, many schools have been forced to close because of the kidnapping risk.
After one abduction at a university in Kaduna state earlier this year, gunmen demanded hundreds of thousands of dollars in ransom. They killed five other students to compel the young people’s parents to raise the money and later released 14 others.
Elsewhere in northern Nigeria, authorities announced that a second group of 15 students had also had been released.
Mohammed Shehu, a police spokesperson in Zamfara state, said the students had been handed over to officials on Friday, 11 days after they were abducted from the College of Agriculture and Animal Science.
