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Gunmen attacked a high school in northwestern Nigeria before dawn on Monday, taking 25 schoolgirls and killing at least one staff member, authorities said in the latest kidnapping of students in the region.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of the girls from a boarding school in Kebbi state, and their motivation was unclear.
Nigeria faces a multifaceted security challenge, particularly from amorphous groups of armed bandits, who specialize in kidnappings for ransom – sometimes totaling thousands of dollars – and are responsible for several high-profile kidnappings in the Northern region of Nigeria. Kidnappings, attacks on villages and major roads have become common due to limited security presence.
They are not associated with extremist groups like dacoits boko haram and the breakaway group Islamic State West Africa Province, whose attacks on communities and government facilities are religiously motivated.
Police He said the boarding school girls were taken from their hostel at 4 am on Monday. Police spokesman Nafiu Abubakar Kotarakoshi said the school was at Maga in the Danko-Wasagu area of the state.
Kotarakoshi said the attackers were armed with “sophisticated weapons” and exchanged fire with the guards before abducting the girls.
“A joint team is currently searching the suspected escape routes and surrounding forests in a coordinated search and rescue operation aimed at recovering the abducted students and arresting the culprits,” the spokesperson said.
Kotarakoshi said one person was killed and another injured, but a resident, who said his daughter and granddaughter were kidnapped in the raid, believed the death toll to be two.
Abdulkareem Abdullahi Maga said, “We were told that the attackers entered the school on several motorcycles. They first went straight to the teacher’s house and killed him before killing the guard.”
The police did not react to this associated Press Call to confirm second death.
Armed groups have targeted schoolchildren in the region since 2014, when Boko Haram abducted 276 students Chibok In Borno State. That kidnapping ushered in a new era of fear, and dozens of people remain in captivity.
Since the Chibok kidnapping, at least 1,500 students have been abducted, as armed groups increasingly find kidnapping a lucrative way to finance other crimes and control villages in the country’s mineral-rich but poorly policed region. In March 2024, more than 130 schoolchildren were rescued after spending more than two weeks in captivity in the Nigerian state. Kaduna,
Nonetheless, raids on schools have decreased in recent years as state governments have implemented security measures in hotspots, including extended closure of schools.
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Mohammed Ibrahim, a freelance journalist in Kaduna, Nigeria, contributed.