Fifty of the more than 300 children snatched by gunmen from a Catholic school in Nigeria have escaped their captors, a Christian group has said in a statement.
"We have received some good news as 50 pupils escaped and have reunited with their parents," said the Christian Association of Nigeria in a statement, adding they escaped between Friday and yesterday.
Gunmen on Friday raided St Mary's co-education school in Niger state, taking 303 children and 12 teachers in one of the largest mass kidnappings in Nigeria.
The abduction came after gunmen had on Monday stormed a secondary school in neighbouring Kebbi state, abducting 25 girls, as security fears mount in Africa's most populous nation, sparking a wave of school closures across other parts of the country.
The number of boys and girls, aged between eight and 18 years, kidnapped from St Mary's is almost half of the school's student population of 629.
The Nigerian government has yet to comment on the number of students and teachers abducted.
"As much as we receive the return of these 50 children that escaped with some sigh of relief, I urge you all to continue in your prayers for the rescue and safe return of the remaining victims," CAN chairman in Niger State, Reverend Bulus Dauwa Yohanna, said in the statement.
Earlier, Pope Leo XIV called for the release of the hostages taken from the Catholic school.
"I learned with immense sadness the news of the kidnappings of priests, faithful, and students in Nigeria and Cameroon," he said.
"I make a heartfelt appeal for the immediate release of the hostages," Leo said, expressing his "deep sorrow, especially for the many young boys and girls kidnapped and for their anguished families".
"Let us pray for these brothers and sisters of ours and that churches and schools may always and everywhere remain places of safety and hope," he said at the end of the Angelus prayer.
The national education ministry ordered the closure of 47 boarding secondary schools across the country following the kidnappings.
The two abduction operations and an attack on a church in the west of the country, in which two people were killed and dozens abducted, came as US President Donald Trump threatened military action over what he called the persecution of Christians by radical Islamists in Nigeria.
Nigeria is still scarred by the kidnapping of nearly 300 girls by Boko Haram jihadists at Chibok in northeastern Borno state more than a decade ago.
Some of those girls are still missing.
