File photo shows a released Chibok girl hugs her relative in Abuja, Nigeria, May 20, 2017. (Xinhua/Olatunji Obasa)
ABUJA, Feb. 28 (Xinhua) -- A teenage Boko Haram fighter clutching an AK-47 assault rifle was among the abductors of 110 schoolgirls in Nigeria's northeastern state of Yobe on Feb. 19, four students and a local guard who witnessed the incident told Xinhua on Tuesday.
The teenage Boko Haram fighter shot sporadically in the air and ordered the students of the Government Girls Science and Technical College in Dapchi area of Yobe to hop into three waiting trucks stationed by the terror group at the entrance of the school on the day of the incident, one of the four students said.
"The boy looked like a 13-year-old. If not that he was holding a gun and shooting it so easily, I would have held and overpowered him," said the 14-year-old student.
Three other girls, all students of the all-girl college, corroborated this narration.
The four girls were among 48 girls who escaped by jumping over the fence and fled to a nearby bush, about five kilometers away from the school, on the day of the attack.
"The three trucks were parked at the school's main gate and manned by some of the attackers, while several others stood at strategic points to capture the distraught students and teachers.
"The teenage Boko Haram fighter and a few others marched to our hostels while shooting endlessly to scare us all," said the students, in the local Hausa language widely spoken across many African countries.
According to them, the attackers did not hurt any of the students or teachers but the fear of imminent abduction made most of the students and local school workers to run in different directions.
The school's 58-year-old guard Halilu Adamu said he fled the scene upon sighting the three trucks stationed at the main gate.
"I saw the boy, young enough to be my grandson, wielding a big gun. From the way he moved, it was obvious that the gun's weight was too much for him," Adamu said.
Many young boys had been taken by Boko Haram in the past and following their conscription into the terror group, they're being used as either suicide bombers or trained to handle firearms during attacks, Afolabi Adewuyi, a Nigerian security expert in the Yobe State capital, told Xinhua by telephone.
Nigerian authorities on Tuesday gave a description of each of the 110 missing schoolgirls, saying the girls' ages range from 11 to 19 years.
The tragedy of the missing girls has brought back memories of a similar occurrence four years ago in Africa's most populous country when more than 200 schoolgirls, also from an all-girl college, were abducted by Boko Haram in the northeastern town of Chibok.
Only 107 of the Chibok girls have been rescued or returned amid ongoing government negotiation with Boko Haram.
The United Nations believes Boko Haram has killed more than 20,000 innocent people since 2009 through terror attacks.
