(Adds number of students found on Monday, and those still
missing)
By Ismail Abba and Afolabi Sotunde
KANKARA, Nigeria, Dec 14 (Reuters) - Usama Aminu was one of
the lucky ones. He managed to escape when gunmen abducted more
than 300 pupils from his school in northwestern Nigeria.
"When I decided to run they brought a knife to slaughter me
but I ran away quickly," he said, sitting on a mat and speaking
softly as he described how he had been in bed at the all-boys
school in Kankara when he heard gunshots on Friday night.
At first, he said, the boys thought the commotion was from
soldiers trying to protect them. But the attackers, armed with
AK-47 assault rifles, were already in the building, threatening
groups who tried to leave their dormitories at the Government
Science secondary school in an attack that has outraged
Nigerians.
"They said they would kill whoever is trying to escape then
I began to run, climbing one rock to another through a forest,"
Aminu said.
Many details of the raid and its aftermath remain unknown.
Police said on Friday they exchanged fire with the
attackers, allowing some students to run for safety. A spokesman
for Katsina state said 17 more students had been found on
Monday, leaving about 320 students missing.
The president's office said on Monday the government was in
contact with the armed men and was negotiating the release of
the boys after security agencies had located them.
"We are making progress and the outlook is positive,"
Katsina Governor Aminu Bello Masari told reporters after meeting
President Muhammadu Buhari, who was visiting his home state.
The governor said the president was fully committed to the
rescue of the schoolchildren, after he had been criticised in
Nigerian newspapers for not visiting the school.
It is still not clear who the gunmen were and officials do
not yet know the motive of the attack.
Attacks by armed gangs, widely known as bandits, are common
throughout northwestern Nigeria. The groups attack civilians,
stealing or kidnapping them for ransom.
ANGER
Muhammad Abubakar, 15, was another pupil who got away,
trekking through farmland and a forest in the dark. He said he
was among 72 boys who had reached safety in the village of
Kaikaibise where he ended up.
"The bandits called us back. They told us not to run. We
started to walk back to them, but as we did, we saw more people
coming towards the dormitory," he told Reuters.
"So I and others ran again. We jumped over the fence and ran
through a forest to the nearest village."
Abubakar, one of eight children, said he saw a number of
boys being rounded up before they were marched out of the
school, which has around 800 students. Seven of his friends are
missing.
As he was reunited with his mother, who sells firewood for a
living, he said: "I never thought I would see my parents again."
Friday's raid evoked memories of the 2014 kidnap of more
than 200 girls from a school in the northeastern town of Chibok
by Islamist group Boko Haram.
Since then, about half of those girls have been found or
freed, dozens have been paraded in propaganda videos and an
unknown number are believed to have died.
Despite the measures taken to find the boys and track down
the assailants, there was growing anger at the precarious
security situation in the country. On Monday, #BringBackOurBoys
was trending on Twitter.
Late last month, Islamist militants killed scores of farmers
in northeastern Borno, beheading some of them.
And in October the country was gripped by some of the worst
civil unrest since its return to civilian rule in 1999,
following weeks of largely peaceful protests against police
brutality in which several demonstrators were shot dead.
Oby Ezekwesili, a former government minister and campaigner
who organised the Bring Back Our Girls Movement after the Chibok
abductions, said the insecurity that led to the latest abduction
was the product of poor governance.
"Nothing of our government system was available to protect
those children," she told Reuters. "What else can define poor
governance."
The presidency declined to comment when asked for a response
to the criticism.