Gunmen have killed a police officer and abducted more than 80 students and five teachers from a school in the Nigerian state of Kebbi, police, residents and teachers said.
The attack is the third mass kidnapping in three weeks in northwestern Nigeria, which the authorities have attributed to armed bandits seeking ransom payments. Usman Aliyu, a teacher at the school, said armed men took more than 80 students, most of them girls.
“They killed one of (the police), broke through the gate and went straight to the students’ lessons,” he told Reuters.
Kebbi police spokesman Nafiu Abubakar said gunmen killed an officer during an exchange and also shot a student receiving medical treatment. Police late Thursday had not released the number of missing students, and a spokesman for Kebbi’s state governor said they were conducting a deliberation of the missing.
The attack took place at a federal government college in the remote city of Birnin Yauri. Abubakar said security forces were looking for a forest near the abducted students and teachers. Atiku Aboki, a resident who went to school shortly after the shooting, said he saw a scene of panic and confusion as people searched for their children.
“When we got there, we saw students crying, teachers crying, everyone has sympathy for people,” he said by telephone. “Everyone was confused. Then my brother called me (to say) that his two children have not seen and (we) do not know if they are among the kidnapped.”
Bandits seeking redemption have kidnapped more than 800 Nigerian students from their schools since December in a series of raids. Some have been liberated while others are still missing.
The raids in the northwestern region are different from insurgencies centered in the northeast, where the militant group Boko Haram made global headlines in 2014 when it abducted more than 270 schoolgirls from the city of Chibok.
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