The armed intervention of a self-defense group allowed the release of the 80 high school students kidnapped on Saturday evening in north-west Nigeria.

According to the authorities, over 80 school-children returning to their village of Mahuta, Katsina state, were kidnapped by bandits and taken to a nearby forest.

They say the school children were recovered Sunday morning, after the operation carried out by a vigilante group. 

This new kidnapping came 48 hours after the release of 344 children and adolescents, kidnapped from their boarding school on December 11 by criminals operating on behalf of the jihadist group Boko Haram.

Idris Muhammed is a security analyst based in Katsina state north west Nigeria, a region with growing incidents of kidnapping and banditry.