AGWARA, Nigeria (Reuters) -Martha Mathias, her husband and two children were asleep at home when gunmen arrived at St Mary’s Catholic School campus, in central Nigeria, in the early hours of Friday.
“They asked my husband to come out, when he went out, they tied him,” said Mathias, a teacher at the school where more than 300 children and staff were abducted in one of the country’s worst school kidnappings in a decade.
The commotion terrified their youngest daughter who saw her father lying on the ground and started crying.
“They told my daughter if she does not keep quiet, they will shoot her. They put the gun in her mouth telling her to keep quiet.”
Mathias’ husband was taken by the gunmen and is among the 12 staff members and around 253 students still in captivity since the November 21 attack on the school.
The Christian Association of Nigeria said on Sunday that 50 students managed to escape from their captors.
‘I RAN. THEY DIDN’T SEE ME’
One of them, 13-year-old Stephen Samuel, said gunmen woke them up, tied them and led them out of the school.
On their way out, gunmen took down a framed picture of the Virgin Mary and shot at it.
Samuel said he escaped when one of the gunmen was trying to fix his motorcycle.
“I ran. They didn’t see me. I didn’t know where to go, so I followed the path we had come from until I met a neighbour. He recognised me, took me in, gave me clothes, and brought me home.”
Nigeria’s government says security forces are searching for the missing children and staff.
Emmanuel Bala, chairman of the school’s parent-teacher association, said he had not seen any of the children that escaped.
Another parent, who gave her name as Njinkonye and whose 10-year-old son was among the missing, said she went to the school on Monday.
“I came to the school, I am here, searching and looking whether I will see any child that returned, but I have not seen any child,” she said. The attack happened during the same week that 25 girls were abducted from a boarding school in northwest Kebbi State and 38 people were taken by gunmen during a church service in Kwara, central Nigeria.
(Writing by Ben Ezeamalu. Editing by Alex Richardson and Mark Potter)
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