5 of her kids were abducted from a Nigerian school. All she has left is hope and prayers
Rashidat Hamza is in despair
KURIGA, Nigeria (AP) — Rashidat Hamza is in despair. All but one of her six children are among the nearly 300 students abducted from their school in Nigeria’s conflict-battered northwest.
More than two days after her children — ages 7 to 18 — went to school in remote Kuriga town only to be herded away by a band of gunmen, she was still in shock Saturday.
“We have never seen this kind of thing where our children were abducted from their school,” she told an Associated Press team that arrived in the Kaduna State town to report on Thursday's attack. “We don't know what to do, but we believe in God.”
The kidnapping in Kuriga was only one of three mass kidnappings in northern Nigeria since late last week, a reminder of the security crisis plaguing Africa’s most populous country. A group of gunmen abducted 15 children from a school in another northwestern state, Sokoto, before dawn Saturday, and a few days earlier 200 people were kidnapped in northeastern Borno State.
