Girls among the nearly 300 who were kidnapped from a school in north-western Nigeria have been describing their ordeal following their release.

“Most of us got injured,” one of the schoolgirls told the BBC, adding that gunmen threatened to shoot them.

The girls were abducted by unidentified assailants from their boarding school in Jangebe, Zamfara state, on Friday and taken to a forest, police said.

The state’s governor said on Tuesday that the 279 girls had been freed.

Such kidnappings are carried out for ransom and are common in the north of the country.