Nigeria rescues 147 from 'torture house': state govt

Police in northern Nigeria have rescued 147 people from an Islamic boarding school where the students were being abused, the fourth such raid in a month, a local official told AFP.

Armed officers found the inmates when they raided a school in the Rigasa district of Kaduna, said Hafsat Baba, Kaduna state women affairs commissioner.

"All the inmates were found in chains and said they were beaten. There are 22 women among them and some of them complained of being sexually abused," she added.

Two Cameroonians and two people from Niger were among those rescued, she said. There were also four children at the school.

The inmates had been taken there by family members for "petty theft, delinquency and drug addiction," Baba added. "Some of them have psychological problems and are mentally unstable."