DAKAR, Senegal — Dozens of Nigerian schoolchildren were kidnapped by gunmen early on Wednesday morning, becoming the latest victims of the West African country’s slide into insecurity. Armed men wearing military uniforms abducted at least 40 people, most of them students, from a boarding school in the town of Kagara, in Niger state in the country’s northwest. “I am safe,” said Ibrahim Ndanusa, 13, in a phone call to his father after running away from his kidnappers. “But I have suffered.”Kidnapping has long been a problem in Nigeria and is becoming worse in many parts of the country. That was in the northeastern state of Borno, the epicenter of Islamist extremist group’s insurgency against the state.

Source: New York Times February 17, 2021 14:47 UTC