Persecuted church agency Open Doors is calling upon the Nigerian President urgently to liberate the 500 or so mostly women and schoolchildren abducted by Islamist terrorists in the past few weeks.
In Gamboru Ngala, a market town in Borno State, 200 people were kidnapped when they were going to collect firewood. The other abduction, from Kaduna State in northern Nigeria, saw 280 students, some as young as eight years old, taken by gunmen on motorcycles.
The BBC reported that 17-year-old Musa Garba* had to slither on the ground like a snake to avoid being detected by his kidnappers as he made his escape through the bush of northern Nigeria. Earlier, camouflaged by his school uniform, he had managed to hide in a heap of cut grass as the group of schoolchildren he was abducted with were taking a break from their forced trek.