A group of armed men abducted more than 220 students and staff from a Catholic boarding school in central Nigeria, local authorities said Friday.
Local police said the attack occurred early Friday morning, just days after a similar attack on a girls’ school in another part of the country.
The Christian Union of Nigeria said a total of 227 people had been abducted, including 215 students and 12 teachers.
What do we know about school kidnappings in Nigeria?
“The Niger State Government has received the disturbing news of the abduction of pupils from St. Mary’s School in Agwara Local Government Area,” Abubakar Usman, Secretary to the State Government, said in a statement.
The local Catholic diocese said that “armed attackers attacked the school between 1:00 am and 3:00 am”. [0000 to 0200 GMT]The abduction of “pupils, students, teachers and a security” guard, who was shot.
“Some students ran away and parents have started coming [to] Take your children as schools are to be closed,” the Christian Union of Nigeria said in a statement.
The secretary of the Niger state government said the school remained open despite intelligence warnings of the increasing threat.
“Regrettably, St. Mary’s School resumed academic activities without informing or obtaining approval from the state government, exposing students and staff to avoidable risk,” a statement from the secretary said.
The Niger State Police Command said St. Mary’s was a secondary school for students aged 12 to 17.
How have Nigerian authorities responded to the kidnapping?
Niger State Police said they had received a report at about 2 a.m. that “some armed bandits have attacked St. Mary’s Private (Catholic) Secondary School… and abducted a number of students from the school hostel, it is yet to be ascertained.”
Tactical police units and military forces were deployed.
Security forces are on high alert after recent attacks and kidnapping incidents.
Police said they were “searching the forests with the aim of rescuing the abducted students.”
Why is Nigerian security under so much scrutiny?
Friday’s kidnapping follows an attack on Monday, in which 25 girls were abducted from a Muslim-majority boarding school in Kebbi state.
The incident forced President Bola Tinubu to cancel his foreign trips to deal with the fallout.
A separate attack on a church in western Nigeria on Tuesday was broadcast live. Two people were killed and dozens were believed to have been abducted.
Like Friday’s attack, no group has claimed responsibility, but gangs known locally as bandits often target schools because of their low level of security. These gangs are generally not ideologically motivated, but have adopted methods used by Islamist insurgents such as Boko Haram.
US President Trump’s threat to take military action in Nigeria has heightened the discussion on Nigeria’s security situation after he said without providing evidence that thousands of Christians have been killed.
Nigeria, which is largely divided between Muslims and Christians, has rejected the accusation of religious persecution.
Edited by: Sam Dusan Inayatullah