220 students, teachers abducted from St Mary’s School in Niger state, Nigeria
Police and military forces have been deployed to search for the missing students. A series of similar attacks has put Nigeria's security in the spotlight.
A group of armed men kidnapped more than 220 pupils and staff from a boarding school in central Nigeria, local officials said on Friday.
Local police said the attack happened in the early hours of Friday morning, just days after a similar attack on a girls' school in another part of the country.
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The Christian Association of Nigeria said that a total of 227 people had been abducted, including 215 pupils and 12 teachers.
The Niger State government has received with deep sadness the disturbing news of the kidnapping of pupils from St. Mary's School in Agwara local government area," Abubakar Usman, the state government secretary, said in a statement.
The local Catholic diocese said "armed attackers invaded" the school between 1:00 am and 3:00 am, abducting "pupils, students, teachers and a security guard" who was shot.
"Some students escaped and parents have started coming [to] pick up their children as the school has to be shut down," the Christian Association of Nigeria said in its statement.
The secretary to the Niger state government said the school had remained open despite intelligence warnings of a heightened threat.
"Regrettably, St. Mary's School proceeded to reopen and resume academic activities without notifying or seeking clearance from the State Government, thereby exposing pupils and the staff to avoidable risk," a statement from the secretary read.
Niger State Police Command said St. Mary's was a secondary school for students aged 12 to 17.
Niger state police said they had received a report around 2:00 am that "some armed bandits invaded St. Mary's Private (Catholic) Secondary School... and abducted a yet to be ascertained number of students from the school's hostel."
Tactical police units and military forces had been deployed.
Security forces have been on high alert following a spate of recent attacks and kidnappings.
The police said they were "combing the forests with a view to rescuing the abducted students."
Friday's kidnapping comes after an attack on Monday resulted in the abduction of 25 girls from a predominantly Muslim boarding school in Kebbi state.
The incident forced President Bola Tinubu to cancel 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 are believed to have been abducted.
As with Friday's attack, no group has claimed responsibility, but gangs known locally as bandits often target schools due to their low level of security. These gangs are usually not ideologically motivated, but have taken on methods used by Islamist insurgents such as Boko Haram.
The spotlight on Nigeria's security situation has been amped up by US President Trump's threats to carry out military action in Nigeria after he said, without providing evidence, that thousands of Christians had been killed.
Nigeria, which is roughly split between Muslims and Christians, has rejected the accusation of religious persecution.
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