Gunmen abduct 25 schoolgirls in northwestern Nigeria

Gunmen attacked a high school in northwestern Nigeria before dawn on Monday, abducting 25 schoolgirls and killing at least one staffer, according to authorities.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for kidnapping the girls from the boarding school in Kebbi state and their motivation was unclear.

Police said the schoolgirls were taken from their dorms at around 4 a.m. local time on Monday. The Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School is in Maga, in the state's Danko-Wasagu area, police spokesperson Nafi’u Abubakar Kotarkoshi said.

The assailants were armed with “sophisticated weapons” and exchanged fire with guards before abducting the girls, Kotarkoshi said.

“A combined team is currently combing suspected escape routes and surrounding forests in a coordinated search and rescue operation aimed at recovering the abducted students and arresting the perpetrators, ” the spokesperson said.

Kotarkoshi said the school's vice principal was killed while reportedly trying to protect the students. Another staff member sustained gunshot wounds.

Nigeria is facing a multidimensional security challenge, specifically from amorphous groups of armed bandits who specialise in kidnapping for ransoms — sometimes totaling thousands of dollars — and have been responsible f or several high-profile abductions across Nigeria’s northern region.

Kidnappings, attacks on villages and along major roads have become common because of the limited security presence.

Those bandits are not connected to militant groups such as Boko Haram and the splinter group Islamic State West Africa Province, whose attacks on communities and government installations are motivated by religion.

Monday's kidnapping is only the latest event of the kind in a country with a long history of student abductions.

Armed groups have targeted school children in the region since 2014, when Boko Haram abducted 276 students from Chibok in Borno state. That abduction marked the beginning of a new era of fear, and dozens remain in captivity.

Since the Chibok abductions, at least 1,500 students have been kidnapped, as armed groups increasingly find in abductions a lucrative way to fund other crimes and control villages in the nation’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 of Kaduna.

Nonetheless, raids on schools have subsided in recent years as state governments implemented security measures in hotspots, including closing schools for an extended period of time.

Based on reporting by Africanews.