Gunmen Abduct 25 Girls From School Dorms at 4am

Gunmen stormed a high school in northwestern Nigeria before dawn on Monday, abducting 25 schoolgirls and killing one staff member, authorities said. Another staffer was injured in the attack, which adds to a troubling pattern of school kidnappings across Nigeria’s northern region, according to the AP. Reuters reported that the school’s vice principal, Hassan Yakubu Makuku, was “shot dead while resisting the attackers.”

Police said no group has yet claimed responsibility for the abductions, which occurred at around 4am at a boarding school in Kebbi state. The attackers seized the girls from their dormitories.

The school is located in Maga, in the Danko-Wasagu area, police spokesperson Nafi’u Abubakar Kotarkoshi said. He explained that the assailants, armed with “sophisticated weapons,” engaged security guards in a firefight before taking the students. “A combined team is currently combing suspected escape routes and surrounding forests in a coordinated search and rescue operation aimed at recovering the abducted students and arresting the perpetrators,” Kotarkoshi added.

Northern Nigeria has faced repeated school abductions since 2014, when Boko Haram militants kidnapped 276 girls from Chibok in Borno state—a tragedy that drew global outrage. Since then, at least 1,500 students have been kidnapped by armed groups exploiting weak security in rural areas. Victims are often released only after ransom payments, which can total thousands of dollars. Nearly 100 of the girls taken from Chibok remain missing a decade later.

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