Armed bandits in Nigeria kidnapped 25 girl students and killed the vice principal of a secondary school in Kebbi state on Monday, police said.
Kidnappings of schoolchildren in the northwestern province of the country have become a routine crime perpetrated by the armed gangs seeking ransom.
Police said that the attackers were armed with Western-made "sophisticated weapons" and were "shooting sporadically" during the raid.
They entered the government girls' Comprehensive Secondary School at around 4 a.m. local time (0300 UTC) and started assembling the female students, after which they took 25 girls as captives and fled the scene, they said.
Meanwhile, they also shot dead the vice principal of the school, resisting the attack.
Police said officers, including additional tactical units, were searching for the gunmen along possible escape routes in forests near the school with the help of the military and local vigilantes.
Northwest Nigeria has been a hunting site for the criminal gangs known as bandits for carrying out “loot and burn homes, steal cattle, as well as carrying out kidnappings and killings of the locals.
In March 2024, the bandits kidnapped and tortured around 130 schoolchildren in Kuriga in the northwestern state of Kaduna. According to a 2024 report by Save the Children, over 1,680 students were kidnapped from Nigerian schools between 2014 and 2022. The whereabouts of many of these children is still unknown to this day.
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