Students taken from Catholic school in Niger state amid threats from Donald Trump to intervene to end what he calls a ‘Christian genocide’
Unknown gunmen have abducted an unidentified number of students from a Catholic school in central Nigeria, the second mass abduction in the country in a week.
The latest kidnapping, in Papiri community in Niger state, came against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s threat to intervene militarily to end a “Christian genocide”, which the Nigerian government has denied is happening.
“The Niger state government has received with deep sadness the disturbing news of the kidnapping of pupils from St Mary’s School in Agwara local government area,” Abubakar Usman, the state government secretary, said in a statement.
Niger, the biggest of the country’s 36 states, runs west from the capital, Abuja, to neighbouring Benin. The incident in the early hours of Friday is the third documented mass school abduction in the state in the last decade. In the last attack in Niger state, in May 2021, 135 pupils were abducted from an Islamic seminary, six of whom died while being held.
