Gunmen kidnapped more than 200 pupils during a raid on a school in northwest Nigeria, a teacher and local residents said. It is one of the country's largest mass abductions in years.
Local government officials in Kaduna State confirmed the kidnapping attack on Kuriga school on Thursday, but gave no figures as they said they were still working out how many children had been abducted.
"As of this moment we have not been able to know the number of children or students that have been kidnapped," Kaduna State Governor Uba Sani told reporters in Kuriga on Thursday. "No child will be left behind."
At least one person was shot dead during the attack, local residents said.
Sani Abdullahi, one of the teachers at the GSS Kuriga school in the Chikun district, said staff managed to escape with many students when the gunmen known locally as bandits attacked early on Thursday firing gunshots in the air.
He told local officials that 187 pupils had been snatched from the main school along with another 100 from the school's primary classes.
Early morning attack
"Early in the morning, before we got up, we heard gunshots from bandits, before we knew it they had gathered up the children," another local resident Musa Mohammed told French news agency AFP.
"We are pleading to the government, all of us are pleading, they should please help us with security."
Another local resident Muhammad Adam also told AFP more than 280 have been kidnapped. Two more residents said around 200 were abducted.
Kidnappings for ransom are common in Africa's most populous country, where heavily armed criminal gangs have targeted schools and colleges in the past, especially in the northwest, though such attacks have abated recently.
The abduction illustrates the complex security challenge facing President Bola Ahmed Tinubu who after coming to office in May promised to make Nigeria safer and bring in more foreign investment.
Thursday's kidnapping also comes almost ten years after Boko Haram jihadists triggered international outcry by kidnapping more than 250 schoolgirls from Chibok in Nigeria's northeast. Some of those girls are still missing.
Long-running insurgency
Amnesty International condemned the latest abductions in Kaduna.
"Schools should be places of safety, and no child should have to choose between their education and their life," the rights group said on X, formerly Twitter.
"The Nigerian authorities must take measures immediately to prevent attacks on schools, to protect children's lives and their right to education."
Nigeria's armed forces are battling on several fronts, including against armed criminals in the northwest and a long-running jihadist insurgency in the northeast of the country.
Between July 2022 and June 2023, 3,620 people were abducted in 582 kidnap-related incidents in Nigeria, according to local risk analysts SBM Intelligence.
(with AFP)
