More than 130 abducted schoolchildren in Nigeria are returning home after weeks in captivity

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KADUNA, Nigeria, March 26, (AP): More than 130 Nigerian schoolchildren rescued after more than two weeks in captivity arrived Monday in their home state in northwestern Nigeria ahead of their anticipated reunions with families, following the latest in a series of mass school abductions in the West African nation.
Six of the 137 students remain in hospital, and one staff member who was abducted along with the children died in captivity, military officials said.
The children were seized by motorcycle-riding gunmen at their school in the remote Kaduna state town of Kuriga on March 7, triggering a wide-ranging rescue operation. They were rescued Sunday by the military in a forest about 200 kilometers (more than 120 miles) to the north in neighboring Zamfara state, though authorities have provided no details of the rescue or said whether any suspected kidnappers were arrested.
The students, many of them below the age of 10, were brought Monday to the Kaduna State Government House with fresh haircuts and newly sewn clothes and footwear – their first change of clothing since their abduction.
Some of them had sore feet suggesting they might have trekked long distances in the forests where they were held hostage.
The six children still in hospital will be made available “as soon as the doctors have certified them fit enough,” Maj. Gen. Mayirenso Saraso, a military chief in Kaduna, said while handing them over to the government.
Information Minister Mohammed Idris told reporters in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, that no ransom was paid for the children’s freedom and that their kidnappers “will be fished out by the security agencies and will never go unpunished.”
Arrests are rare in Nigeria’s kidnapping crisis as most victims are released only after ransom payments by their families or through deals that sometimes involve the release of their gang members. The Nigerian government, however, does not admit to such deals.

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