Abuja, Monday

Gunmen kidnapped 140 students from a boarding school in northwestern Nigeria on Monday, a school official said, the latest in a wave of mass abductions targetting schoolchildren and students.

Heavily-armed criminal gangs in northwest and central Nigeria often attack villages to loot, steal cattle and abduct for ransom, but since the start of the year have increasingly targeted schools and colleges.

The attackers opened fire and overpowered security guards after storming the Bethel Baptist High School in Kaduna state in the early hours of Monday, abducting most of the 165 pupils boarding there overnight.

Tactical teams

“The kidnappers took away 140 students, only 25 students escaped. We still have no idea where the students were taken,” Emmanuel Paul, a teacher at the school told AFP.

Kaduna state police spokesman Muhammed Jalige confirmed the attack but could not give details on the number of pupils taken.

“Tactical police teams went after the kidnappers,” he said. “We are still on the rescue mission.”

Police said they had safely rescued 26 people, including a female teacher.

Around 1,000 students and pupils have been abducted in Nigeria since December. Most have been released after negotiations with local officials, although some are still being held.

Often, gangs target rural schools and colleges where students stay in dormitories and security is light, allowing them to easily transport large numbers of victims to forest hideouts to negotiate ransoms.

The kidnapping of Nigerian schoolchildren first made major international headlines in 2014 when jihadist group Boko Haram snatched nearly 300 schoolgirls from a rural school in Chibok in northeast Borno state, sparking the online #BringBackOurGirls campaign.

Recent abductions by gunmen have prompted six northern states to shut public schools to prevent such attacks.

Bethel Baptist High School is a co-education college established by the Baptist church in 1991 at Maramara village in Chikun district outside the state capital Kaduna. Monday’s attack was at least the fourth mass school kidnapping in Kaduna state since December.

Kaduna state governor Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai has been one of the most vocal local leaders, insisting he will refuse to pay ransom money.  – AFP