Tired but smiling, freed Nigerian boys back home

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

Television pictures showed the boys dressed in dusty clothes and light green uniforms, looking weary but otherwise well, getting off buses in the city of Katsina and walking to a government building.

One of them, with flecks of dried mud on his face, told Channels TV the captors had fed them bread and cassava.

"It was cold," he said. Asked how he had felt when the bus arrived in Katsina, he said:"I was really happy", and broke into a smile.

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.

President Muhammadu Buhari said: "This is a huge relief to the entire country and the international community."

On Tuesday, Boko Haram, the extremists group behind the abduction of 276 schoolgirls in Chibok in 2014, claimed responsibility for the raid.

On Friday, the boys walked from the bus in single file, flanked by soldiers and armed police officers. A group of their parents waited to be reunited with them in another part of town.

"I couldn't believe what I heard until neighbors came to inform me that it's true," said Hafsat Funtua, mother of Hamza Naziru, 16.

Describing the moment she heard the news, she said she ran out of her house with joy "not knowing where to go".

Another parent, Husseini Ahmed, whose 14-year-old Mohammed Husseini was also among those abducted, expressed happiness and relief that he would soon be reunited with his son.

"We are happy and anxiously expecting their return," he said.

Agencies - Xinhua