Armed men have killed a teacher and abducted at least 25 students in an attack on a girls’ secondary school in north-western Nigeria, police say.<\/p>\n
The gang invaded the Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School in Maga, Kebbi State, at around 04:00 local time (0300 GMT) on Monday, they said.<\/p>\n
The attackers “engaged police personnel on duty in a gun duel” before scaling the perimeter fence and seizing the students from their hostel, a statement said.<\/p>\n
One member of staff was killed while trying to protect the students. A second sustained gunshot wounds and is now receiving treatment.<\/p>\n
Eyewitnesses described a large group of attackers, known locally as bandits, who arrived firing sporadically to cause panic.<\/p>\n
Residents told the BBC that the gunmen subsequently marched a number of girls into nearby bushland.<\/p>\n
The police said they had deployed “additional police tactical units, alongside military personnel and vigilante groups” to the area.<\/p>\n
A coordinated search and rescue operation is underway in surrounding forests and suspected escape routes.<\/p>\n
Over the past decade, schools in northern Nigeria have become frequent targets for armed groups, who often carry out abductions to seek ransom payments or leverage deals with the government.<\/p>\n
However, this is the first major school abduction since March 2024, when more than 200 pupils were seized from a school in Kuriga, Kaduna state.<\/p>\n
The attack in Kebbi State highlights the persistent security crisis plaguing the region, leaving families in Maga in a state of fearful exhaustion as they wait and hope for their daughters’ safe return.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Armed men have killed a teacher and abducted at least 25 students in an attack on a girls’…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":385400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[50,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-385399","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115565577703643698","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/385400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}