Armed men attacked St. Mary's Catholic co-educational school in western Nigeria on Friday, abducting 303 children and 12 teachers. Fifty of them managed to escape, a Christian organization announced on Sunday.

A "certain relief" tinged with anxiety. Fifty students among the more than 300 abducted Friday from a Catholic school in Nigeria have escaped their captors, a Christian organization announced Sunday in a statement. "We have received good news: 50 students have escaped and been reunited with their parents," the Christian Association of Nigeria said in a statement, specifying that they escaped between Friday and Saturday.

“Even though the return of these 50 children who managed to escape brings us some relief, I urge you all to continue to pray for the rescue and safe return of the other victims,” Reverend Bulus Dauwa Yohanna, president of CAN in Niger State and owner of the school, said in a statement.

Several abductions in the same week

Armed men attacked St. Mary's Catholic Co-educational School in Niger State, western Nigeria, early Friday morning, abducting 303 children and 12 teachers. This is one of the largest mass kidnappings ever perpetrated in Nigeria.

This kidnapping comes after another group of armed men stormed a high school in the neighboring state of Kebbi on Monday, abducting 25 girls. These events are fueling security fears in Africa's most populous country and have led to the precautionary closure of numerous schools across the nation.

The boys and girls abducted from Saint Mary's, aged between eight and 18, represent nearly half of the school's 629 students. The Nigerian government has not yet commented on the number of students and teachers abducted.

Nigeria remains scarred by another mass abduction, that of nearly 300 schoolgirls by Boko Haram jihadists in Chibok, Borno State (northeast), more than ten years ago. Some of them are still missing.