More than 100 girls are missing after suspected Boko Haram militants attacked their school in northeastern Nigeria Monday night, according the father of one of those missing.
Bashir Manzo told CNN that his daughter Fatima was among at least 104 schoolgirls unaccounted for after the raid on the Government Girls Science Technical College in Dapchi, Yobe.
Nigeria’s government has yet to release an official list of those missing and government agencies have given contradictory information.
Shortly after the attack, the Yobe governor’s office said 50 girls were unaccounted for.
However, Manzo — the newly elected head of the parents’ association at the school — said that according to parents and the association’s records 104 girls were missing.
“According to our record 104 girls are missing including my 16-year-old daughter, Fatima. Those are the numbers we gather from fathers who have not seen their children from the school. They told us they saw some girls but the governor has told us yesterday they haven’t found them,” Manzo said.
The group’s secretary, Kachalla Bukar, told CNN that his 14-year-old daughter was also missing.
“My daughter Aisha Kachalla is missing and we can’t get any information from school because soldiers are all over there. No security came to Dapchi the day the men came, now over a hundred soldiers have taken over the village,” Bukar said.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has promised the families of the missing girls that they’ll be found and their attackers brought to justice.
Buhari called the situation a “national disaster” and said more troops and surveillance aircraft had been deployed to search the entire territory for the unknown number of missing students.
“We are sorry that it happened; we share your pain. Let me assure that our gallant armed forces will locate and safely return all the missing girls,” Buhari said in a Twitter statement.
The local Yobe government released a statement Wednesday announcing the girls had been found, but later apologized for the “erroneous” statement that it said was based on inaccurate information.
Earlier, the governor’s aide released a statement saying 50 students were still unaccounted for after armed militants approached the school under the cover of darkness Monday night. The statement also said it was unclear whether the students were abducted by the militants.
“The Yobe state government has no credible information yet as to whether any of the schoolgirls was taken hostage by the terrorists,” said Abdullahi Bego, an aide to Gov. Ibrahim Gaidam, in a statement.
Witnesses told CNN that terrified residents of the town fled on Monday when they saw trucks and motorcycles carrying armed men shooting at people randomly.
Boko Haram militants kidnapped nearly 300 girls from a school in Chibok in April 2014, setting off global outrage. Many of the Chibok girls were freed after negotiations, but more than 100 remain in captivity, their whereabouts unknown.
