Gunmen have abducted 25 girls from a boarding school in northwestern Nigeria, according to police.
The attack took place at 4am on Monday local time (3am UK time), leaving one staff member dead and another injured.
Police spokesperson Nafi’u Abubakar Kotarkoshi said the assailants were armed with “sophisticated weapons” and exchanged fire with guards before abducting the girls.
He said teams were searching suspected escape routes and surrounding forests to find the abducted students and perpetrators.
The boarding school is in Maga, in Kebbi state’s Danko-Wasagu area.
No group has claimed responsibility for the abductions.
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The incident is the latest school abduction in Nigeria‘s northern region, where armed groups have been targeting schoolchildren for more than a decade.
But there has been an uptick in attacks by different armed groups in northern Nigeria this year.
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The most infamous case was in 2014 when militant group Boko Haram abducted 276 students from a secondary school in Chibok. Many remain missing.
Sometimes children are released by their abductors or rescued by authorities.
Last year, authorities managed to rescue 137 hostages more than two weeks after they were taken. Yet even in this case, more than half of those taken were presumed to still be held by the captors.
