More than 300 children and staff were abducted from a Catholic school in Nigeria this week, one of the worst mass kidnappings ever recorded there. The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) said on Saturday it had raised its estimate of those taken from St Mary’s School in Niger state on Friday to 315 from an earlier estimate of 227 following a “verification exercise”.
This now makes it 303 students (and) — 12 teachers, bringing the total number of abducted persons to 315, it said in a statement, adding the new figure included 88 students who had been captured as they tried to escape. The kidnapping comes amid a surge of attacks by armed groups in Nigeria, which has been under heightened scrutiny since US President Donald Trump threatened military action this month over the “treatment of Christians”.