More than 300 Nigerian schoolboys have been released after terrorist group Boko Haram claimed last week that they had kidnapped them, officials said.
Aminu Bello Masari, the governor of Katsina state in northern Nigeria, said on Thursday that a total of 344 boys have been released and are on their way to Katsina to be medically examined and reunited with their families the next day, Reuters reported.
“We recovered most of the boys,” Masari said to the outlet. “It’s not all of them.”
The BBC quoted a security source as telling the AFP news agency that some boys were still being held by their captors.
A new version of the boys’ release came hours after Boko Haram militants released a video allegedly showing the students in a secret location.
The boys were kidnapped from Government Science Secondary School in Kankara on Friday night when gunmen attacked their school.
The Islamist militant group has abducted schoolchildren in the past, most recently in April 2014, when nearly 300 schoolgirls from Chibok in the northeastern state of Borno went missing. About 100 of those girls have still not been found.
With Post Wires