Police in the northern Nigerian city of Kaduna have rescued more than 300 male students being held at an Islamic school where many had been tortured and sexually abused, a police spokesman said Friday. Officers raided a building in the Rigasa area of the city on Thursday where the victims including adults and minors were kept in "the most debasing and inhuman conditions in the name of teaching them the Koran and reforming them", Kaduna state police spokesman Yakubu Sabo told AFP.

"We found around 100 students including children as young as nine, in chains stuffed in a small room, all in the name of reforming them and making them responsible persons," Sabo said. The school which has been operating for a decade, enrolled students brought by their families to learn the Koran and be rehabilitated from drug abuse and other illnesses, police said. The proprietor of the school and six staff were arrested during the raid.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2019