GAMBORU NGALA, Nigeria — One month after suspected Islamist militants abducted more than 100 people in this remote area of northern Nigeria, their families are pressing local authorities for news of the missing — mostly girls and young women — and pleading with foreign governments for help with their rescue. In a dilapidated camp for … Read more
MEXICO CITY — Mexican authorities Sunday rescued another 16 people kidnapped by criminal gangs two days earlier in the northern city of Culiacan. Forty-two people were released Saturday amid a wave of violence. Also on Sunday, a member of Mexico’s national guard was killed in the region as he took part in the rescue efforts … Read more
KURIGA, Nigeria — Rashidat Hamza is in despair. All but one of her six children are among the nearly 300 students abducted from their school in Nigeria’s conflict-battered northwest. More than two days after her children — ages 7 to 18 — went to school in remote Kuriga town only to be herded away by … Read more
ABUJA, Nigeria — Gunmen attacked a school in Nigeria’s northwest region Thursday and abducted at least 287 students, the headteacher told authorities, marking the second mass abduction in the West African nation in less than a week. Abductions of students from schools in northern Nigeria are common and have become a source of concern since … Read more
CAPE TOWN, South Africa — The mother of a 6-year-old girl who has been missing in South Africa for nearly three weeks was arrested and charged Thursday with kidnapping and selling or trafficking her daughter, a shocking twist in a case that has seized the country’s attention and sparked deep anger in the small, poor … Read more
CAPE TOWN, South Africa — A surge of new attacks by an Islamic State-affiliated group in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province has left more than 70 children missing, with fears they may have drowned in a river or been kidnapped by militants as thousands of families fled, local authorities and a group of aid agencies said. … Read more
WARSAW, Poland — A Polish doctor kidnapped in Chad has been freed and is “safe and sound,” Poland’s foreign minister said Tuesday. The woman had been volunteering at the Saint-Michel Hospital in the Central African nation’s Tandjile region, where kidnappings for ransom are common. Attackers pretending to be patients abducted her and a Mexican doctor, … Read more
N’DJAMENA, Chad — A search was underway for a Polish doctor kidnapped in southern Chad, officials and media in Poland reported Monday. The woman was volunteering at the Saint-Michel Hospital, several hundred kilometers (miles) from the capital in the Central African nation, when attackers pretending to be patients abducted her and a Mexican doctor, Polsat … Read more
BOGOTA, Colombia — Colombia’s government and the nation’s largest remaining guerrilla group have extended by six months a ceasefire that began last year, with the National Liberation Army rebels also promising to stop kidnapping civilians for ransom. The truce was set to expire on Tuesday. But in a brief statement issued just minutes before midnight, … Read more
JAKARTA, Indonesia — Separatist rebels asked for the immediate release Saturday of the New Zealand pilot who’s been held hostage for almost a year in Indonesia’s restive Papua region. Egianus Kogoya, a regional commander in the Free Papua Movement, took Philip Mark Mehrtens, a pilot from Christchurch who was working for Indonesian aviation company Susi … Read more