The Gulf Time Newspaper One of the finest business newspapers in the UAE brought to you by our professional writers and editors.
Bloomberg
Nigerian police said 84 people held hostage by gunmen were freed in the northern state of Katsina.
Police responding to a distress call engaged the assailants in a gunfight and they fled, Katsina Police spokesman Gambo Isah said in an emailed statement.
It comes days after more than 300 schoolboys seized from a boarding school in the same state were freed by gunmen who held them for six days. Boko Haram insurgents claimed responsibility for that attack.
The extremist groups have been infiltrating the country’s northwest in recent times, even getting involved in conflicts
between herders and crop
farmers over grazing rights.
More than 300 students kidnapped in northwest Nigeria last week have been freed after being held captive for six days, according to officials.
Unverified video and audio recordings purportedly made by Boko Haram claimed that the militant group was responsible for the armed attack on a boys’ boarding school in the northwestern town of Kankara on
December 11.