ByREUTERS
Updated:

Fifty of the more than 300 students kidnapped from a Nigerian Catholic school last week have escaped, the Christian Association of Nigeria said on Sunday.

Catholic school in the northwest on Friday, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) said, the latest in a spate of school attacks this week that has forced the government to shut 47 colleges.

Friday's incident in Niger state was the largest mass kidnapping of school children since the March 2024 abduction of students in northern Kaduna state.

Reverend Bulus Dauwa Yohanna, the CAN chairman in Niger, said he had traveled to the school. He said some students managed to escape, but gave no details.

Belongings and clothes left behind at St. Mary's School, in Papiri, Niger state, Nigeria, in an undated handout image obtained by Reuters on November 23, 2025, following reports of a kidnapping of more than 300 children and staff from the Catholic school on November 21, 2025.
Belongings and clothes left behind at St. Mary's School, in Papiri, Niger state, Nigeria, in an undated handout image obtained by Reuters on November 23, 2025, following reports of a kidnapping of more than 300 children and staff from the Catholic school on November 21, 2025. (credit: Social Communications Department/Catholic Diocese of Kontagora/Handout via REUTERS)

Christians abducted from the Nigerian Church

Thirty-eight people who were kidnapped from a church service in Nigeria's central Kwara state last week were released on Sunday, the governor of the state said.

Gunmen attacked the Christ Apostolic Church in Kwara last Tuesday, killing at least two people and kidnapping 38 before vanishing into the forest.

This is a developing story.