Gunmen attacked a government girls’ boarding school in Nigeria’s Kebbi State early on Monday, killing the vice principal and abducting 25 female students in the latest mass kidnapping to hit the country’s northwest, police said.
The attackers, armed with rifles and using what authorities described as coordinated tactics, stormed Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School in the town of Maga at around 4 a.m. local time, police spokesperson Nafiu Abubakar Kotarkoshi said.
They exchanged fire with police officers guarding the school before scaling the perimeter fence and seizing the students, he added.
Vice Principal Hassan Yakubu Makuku was shot dead as he tried to resist the gunmen, while another staff member was wounded by gunfire, according to Kotarkoshi.
Police said additional tactical units, along with soldiers and local vigilante groups, have been deployed to search nearby forests and suspected escape routes in a bid to rescue the abducted girls.
Northwest Nigeria has suffered a wave of school kidnappings by armed gangs seeking ransom, despite repeated government pledges to improve security. In one of the most notorious incidents, Islamist group Boko Haram abducted 270 schoolgirls from the northeastern town of Chibok in 2014. Many of those girls later escaped or were freed, but some remain missing.