Five more of the dozens of students kidnapped last month from their college in northwest Nigeria have been found, police said Friday, bringing to 10 the number freed this week.

Gunmen last month seized 39 students from a school in Afaka in Kaduna state, after a gunfight with soldiers.

It was the latest mass kidnapping in the country's northwest, where criminal gangs have been increasingly abducting students for ransom, raiding villages, pillaging and stealing cattle.

"We recovered five more students among the students that were kidnapped from College of Forestry Mechanization," state police spokesman Mohammed Jalige told AFP.

He said the students were picked up on Thursday in the bushes in Birnin Gwari district where criminal gangs have camps.

Jalige said the students -- four men and a woman -- were released by their captors "due to pressure and intensive patrols in the bushes".

"We still have 29 students in captivity," he added.

Friday Sani, a spokesman for a support group of parents of the kidnapped students, said the five students were brought to the school on Friday and handed over to their parents.

"The return of five more students has filled us with hope that all the 29 remaining students will be freed soon," he told AFP.

On Monday, five students were found by soldiers in the same area and where reunited with their families on Wednesday after undergoing medical checks at a military facility.

Heavily armed gangs have recently turned their focus to schools, where they kidnap students or schoolchildren for ransom -- the Afaka mass abduction was at least the fourth such attack since December.

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