Fifty students who were abducted from a Catholic school in Nigeria on Friday have escaped from their captors and returned home.

Some students hid in the bush to escape their captors, while local farmers helped others return home, Daniel Atori, a spokesman for the founder of St Mary’s school in Papiri in Niger state, said in a statement on Sunday. More than 250 students and teachers from the primary school remain in captivity.

The second mass kidnapping within the past week has increased scrutiny on Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu, after his US counterpart Donald Trump claimed that Christians are being persecuted in the West African country.

Authorities have shut dozens of schools across the country, with nervous parents retrieving their children from a federal government institution in the capital, Abuja. Twenty-four students remain missing after being abducted from a school in Kebbi state on Monday.

 “As much as we receive the return of these 50 children that escaped with some sigh of relief, I urge you all to continue in your prayers for the rescue and safe return of the remaining victims,” school founder Reverend Bulus Dauwa Yohanna said in a statement.