A tree trunk, some quick thinking and crawling several miles through the forest helped a Nigerian schoolboy escape from kidnappers. The 17-year-old student (whose name we can’t reveal) was abducted alongside more than 500 others from Government Science Secondary School in the north-western Katsina state on Friday night. “We were being pushed and beaten, we spent the night marching, sometimes walking on thorns. Thirty minutes before dawn we were told to sleep,” he told BBC Hausa. Katsina State governor Aminu Bello Masari said 333 students were still missing but it is not clear how many of them are with their abductors, as many may have run away and not yet been found. He also said that the kidnappers had made contact and that negotiations were under way. The student who escaped said the armed men came to the school around 21:30 local time (20:30 GMT) on Friday and that many students jumped the school fence and fled when they heard gunshots. However they were tracked by the gunmen who had flashlights and who tricked them into believing that they were security personnel and asked them to return.

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