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A tree trunk, some quick thinking and crawling several miles through the forest helped a Nigerian schoolboy escape from kidnappers.

The 17-year-old student (whose name we can't reveal) was abducted alongside more than 500 others from Government Science Secondary School in the north-western Katsina state on Friday night.

"We were being pushed and beaten, we spent the night marching, sometimes walking on thorns. Thirty minutes before dawn we were told to sleep," he told BBC Hausa.

He said that while the group was resting, he found a tree under which he sat down.

"After we sat down, I leaned back a little. I found the side of a tree which I hid behind. I lay down and stretched out my legs."

When the gunmen ordered the rest of the group to move on, they didn't notice him behind the tree.

"After everyone left, I started crawling and looking round, until I entered a nearby village, and it is by the special grace of God that I was able to escape," he said.

Katsina State Governor Aminu Bello Masari said 333 students were still missing but it is not clear how many of them are with their abductors, as many may have run away and not yet been found. He also said that the kidnappers had made contact and that negotiation was underway.

However, Garba Shehu, a spokesman for the Nigerian president, had told the BBC that students who had fled said only 10 of their colleagues remained with the gunmen.