The country has seen a wave of recent mass abductions, as it suffers from multiple interlinked security concerns.

Nigerian authorities have secured the release of 130 kidnapped schoolchildren taken by gunmen from a Catholic school in November, according to a presidential spokesman, after 100 were freed earlier this month.

“Another 130 Abducted Niger State Pupils Released, None Left In Captivity,” Sunday Dare said in a post on X on Sunday.

In late November, hundreds of students and staff were kidnapped from St Mary’s co-educational boarding school in north-central Niger State.

The attack came amid a wave of mass abductions reminiscent of the 2014 Boko Haram kidnapping of schoolgirls in the town of Chibok.

The West African country suffers from multiple interlinked security concerns, from armed groups in the northeast to armed “bandit” gangs in the northwest.

The exact number of children taken from St Mary’s has been unclear throughout the ordeal.

Initially, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) said that 315 students and staff were unaccounted for after the attack in the rural hamlet of Papiri.

About 50 of them escaped immediately afterwards, and on December 7, the government secured the release of about 100 people.

That would leave about 165 thought to be still in captivity before Sunday’s announcement that 130 were rescued.

However, a UN source told the AFP news agency that all those taken appeared to have been released, as dozens thought to have been kidnapped had managed to run off during the attack and make their way home.

The accounting has been complicated because the children’s homes are scattered across swaths of rural Nigeria, sometimes requiring three or four hours of travel by motorbike to reach their remote villages, the source said.

The source told the AFP that “the remaining set of girls/secondary school students will be taken to Minna”, the capital of Niger State, on Monday.

“We’ll have to still do final verification,” Daniel Atori, a spokesman for CAN in Niger State, told the AFP.

Mass kidnappings

It has not been made public who seized the children from their boarding school, or how the government secured their release.

Kidnappings for ransom are a common way for criminals and armed groups to make quick cash in Nigeria.

But a spate of mass abductions in November put an uncomfortable spotlight on the country’s already grim security situation.

Assailants kidnapped two dozen Muslim schoolgirls, 38 church worshippers, and a bride and her bridesmaids, with farmers, women and children also taken hostage.

The kidnappings also come as Nigeria faces a diplomatic offensive from the United States, where President Donald Trump has alleged that there have been mass killings of Christians in Nigeria that amounted to a “genocide”, and he threatened military intervention.

Nigeria’s government and independent analysts reject that framing, which has long been used by the Christian right in the US and Europe.

One of the first mass kidnappings that drew international attention was in 2014, when nearly 300 girls were seized from their boarding school in the northeastern town of Chibok by the Boko Haram armed group.

A decade later, Nigeria’s kidnap-for-ransom crisis has “consolidated into a structured, profit-seeking industry” that raised some $1.66m between July 2024 and June 2025, according to a recent report by SBM Intelligence, a Lagos-based consultancy.

Israel’s security cabinet has approved the recognition of 19 new settlements in the occupied West Bank as the government continues its settlement expansion push.

Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a settler who proposed the move alongside Defence Minister Israel Katz, said the decision was about blocking the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are considered illegal under international law.

Saudi Arabia condemned the move. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said Israel’s “relentless” settlement expansion fuels tensions, restricts Palestinian access to land, and threatens the viability of a sovereign Palestinian state.

Violence in the occupied West Bank has surged since the war in Gaza began in October 2023, further heightening fears that settlement expansion could entrench Israel’s occupation and undermine a two-state solution.

The two-state solution refers to the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital, broadly along the lines that existed prior to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Since taking office in 2022, the current Israeli government has significantly increased the approval of new settlements and begun the legalisation process for unauthorised outposts, recognising them as “neighbourhoods” of existing settlements.

The most recent decision brings the total number of settlements approved over the past three years to 69, according to Smotrich.

The approvals come just days after the United Nations said settlement expansion had reached its highest level since 2017.

The latest approvals include the re-establishment of two settlements — Ganim and Kadim — which were dismantled nearly 20 years ago.

In May, Israel approved 22 new settlements in the occupied West Bank – the biggest expansion in decades.

The Israeli government also approved plans in August to build more than 3,000 homes in the so-called E1 project between Jerusalem and the Maale Adumim settlement, which had been frozen for decades amid fierce opposition internationally.

Smotrich at the time said the plan would “bury the idea of a Palestinian state”.

About 700,000 settlers live in approximately 160 settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now. It is land Palestinians seek for a future independent state.

Settlement expansion has angered Arab nations who have consistently said it undermines prospects for a two-state solution.

It has also raised concerns about the possible annexing of the occupied West Bank.

US President Donald Trump had warned Israel about such a move, telling TIME magazine that Israel would lose all its support from the US if it happened.

In September, the UK – along with other countries including Australia and Canada – recognised a Palestinian state, a significant although symbolic change in government policy.

Israel opposed the move, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying a Palestinian state “will not happen”.

Yury Ushakov’s remarks come a day after US and Russian officials held talks on the US proposal in Florida.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top foreign policy aide says that changes made by European countries and Ukraine to the United States’ proposals for an end to Russia’s war on Ukraine did not improve prospects for peace.

“I am sure that the proposals that the Europeans and Ukrainians have made or are trying to make definitely do not improve the document and do not improve the possibility of achieving long-term peace,” Yury Ushakov was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies on Sunday.

The US-drafted proposals for an end to the nearly four-year ⁠war, leaked to the media last month, raised European and Ukrainian concerns that they favour more of Russia’s wartime demands ​and that US President Donald Trump’s administration could push Kyiv into conceding too much.

Since then, European and ‍Ukrainian negotiators have met with Trump envoys in an attempt to add their own proposals to the US drafts, though the exact contents of the current proposal have not been disclosed.

The remarks from Ushakov came after Putin’s special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, met in Florida on Saturday with US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Dmitriev said the talks would continue ​on Sunday.

The Miami meeting followed US talks on Friday with European and Ukrainian officials.

In the wake of those talks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his team should hold more talks with European allies.

“There is a shared sense that after the work by our diplomatic team in the United States, we should now hold consultations with European partners in a broader circle,” Zelenskyy said in a post on X on Sunday.

Three-way talks?

Zelenskyy had said on Saturday that Ukraine ‌would back a US proposal for three-way talks with the US and Russia if it facilitated more exchanges of prisoners and paved the way for meetings of national leaders.

Ushakov ‌said that a proposal for three-way talks had not been seriously discussed by ⁠anyone and that it was not being worked on.

Russia says that European leaders are intent on scuttling the talks by introducing conditions that they know will be unacceptable to Russia, which took 12-17 square kilometres (4.6 to 6.6 square miles) of Ukrainian territory per day in 2025.

Ukraine and European leaders say that Russia cannot ‌be allowed to achieve its aims in what they call its imperial-style land grab.

Ukraine battles attempted Russian breakthrough

In Ukraine, fighting continues with the Ukrainian army battling an attempted Russian breakthrough in the Sumy region, it said on Sunday, following reports that Moscow forcibly moved 50 people from a border village there.

This marks a renewed Russian advance in the part of the region previously largely spared from intense ground fighting since Ukraine regained land there in a swift 2022 counter-offensive.

“Fighting is currently ongoing in the village of Grabovske,” Ukraine’s joint task force said, adding the troops were “making efforts to drive the occupiers back into Russian territory”.

Zelenskyy said that over the week, “Russia has launched approximately 1,300 attack drones, nearly 1,200 guided aerial bombs, and nine missiles of various types” against Ukraine.

Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of fighting in the country’s east.

A manhunt is under way after a shooting at a tavern in South Africa left nine people dead and another 10 injured.

Police said seven men and two women were killed in Bekkersdal, near Johannesburg, after about 12 unidentified gunmen arrived in two vehicles and opened fire at patrons.

The shooting happened at about 01:00 local time on Sunday (23:00 GMT Saturday) and the perpetrators “continued to shoot randomly as [people] fled the scene”, police added.

South Africa has one of the highest murder rates in the world. Sixty-three people were killed every day on average between April and September this year, according to police figures.

Murders are often the result of arguments, robberies and gang violence. The motive for this attack is not clear.

At the scene, deputy provincial police commissioner Maj-Gen Fred Kekana told broadcaster Newzroom Afrika that the perpetrators, armed with pistols and one AK-47, were “unprovoked”.

“The poor patrons were just enjoying themselves when people came and shot,” he said.

Two of the victims were shot outside the tavern as they tried to flee and a third was a taxi driver who had dropped off a passenger nearby, Maj-Gen Kekana added.

Resident Nokuthula Bhukwana went to the tavern after she heard the shooting.

“When we arrived at the scene, we opened the doors and indeed scores of people were lying on the floor,” she told the Reuters news agency.

“We rushed around and others were calling the police, and we also called the ambulance and they arrived. We had to carry some of the injured people using wheelbarrows to the clinic.”

Speaking to Newzroom Afrika, one resident described how gunfire had become a normal thing at night in Bekkersdal.

“Criminals, they do as they please here,” the unnamed man said.

“These guns, they sound each and every evening… as soon as it’s dusk we know that gunshots are about to sound and they will sound severely.

“It is terrorising our communities.”

Interviewed at the scene, deputy mayor for the local municipality Nontombi Molatlhegi said that locals were afraid of speaking out and identifying those responsible.

She said that the police were under-resourced, and too thinly spread, and called for the military to get involved in protecting residents.

“We are crying, as well as the city political leadership, for the intervention of the national government to release [the army] so that they can be able to come in this space” and be visible.

There are about three million legally held firearms in South Africa, but there are at least the same number of unlicensed weapons in circulation in the country, which has a population of 63 million, according to statistics cited by Gideon Joubert from the South African Gunowners’ Association.

Earlier this month, at least 11 people – including a child – were shot dead at a hostel near Pretoria.

There has been a significant increase in mass shootings – where four or more people are either killed or injured – since 2020, Claire Taylor, a researcher at campaign group Gun Free South Africa (GFSA), told the BBC.

Looking at media reports in 2024 her organisation recorded 80 such incidents, which was up from 71 the previous year. There has, however, been a decline in reported mass shootings in 2025.

Among the most common locations are licensed taverns, such as in Bekkersdal this weekend, or illegal drinking spots, known locally as shebeens, which was the case in the 6 December killings.

Additional reporting by Damian Zane