Nigerian boys arrive home after kidnapping ordeal

Dozens of schoolboys who were rescued from kidnappers in northwest Nigeria arrived back home on Friday, many of them barefoot and clutching blankets.

The boys, dressed in dusty clothes and some in light green uniforms, looked weary but otherwise well, walking to a government building in the city of Katsina.

A group of their parents waited to be reunited with them in another part of town.

A week earlier, gunmen on motorbikes raided the boys’ boarding school in the nearby town of Kankara and marched hundreds of them into the vast Rugu forest.

Authorities said security services rescued them on Thursday, although it was not clear if all of them had been recovered.

The abduction evoked memories of militant group Boko Haram’s 2014 kidnapping of more than 270 schoolgirls in the northeastern town of Chibok.

Six years on, only about half the girls have been found or freed. Others were married off to fighters, while some are assumed to be dead.

Hours before the rescue of the boys was announced, a video started circulating online purportedly showing Boko Haram militants with some of the boys.

Reuters was unable to verify the authenticity of the footage or who released it.