Two dozen Nigerian girls who were kidnapped from their boarding school last week in the country's northwest have been released, the presidency announced Tuesday.

Nigeria has suffered a string of abductions of schoolchildren since Islamist group Boko Haram kidnapped 276 girls in Chibok in the restive northeast in 2014, sparking an international outcry.

"President Bola Tinubu has welcomed the release today of the 24 schoolgirls abducted by terrorists in Maga," Kebbi State, on November 17, said a statement from Bayo Onanuga, special adviser to the Nigerian president.

Authorities had said a gang armed with "sophisticated weapons, shooting sporadically" attacked the school overnight, leaving a school official dead and a security guard injured.

The assailants had kidnapped 25 girls, but one

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