Nigerian schoolchildren missing after armed attack

More than 300 boys remain unaccounted for after armed men on motorcycles stormed the boys’ Government Science Secondary School in northwestern Katsina state late on Friday. Several students fled the premises for safety as police opened fire on the gunmen. State Gov. Aminu Masari on Sunday said 333 students remained missing. “Efforts are being made to ascertain the actual number of children that have been kidnapped,” Masari said.

Who staged the attack? Authorities blamed local bandits with a record of kidnapping for ransom. President Muhammadu Buhari in a statement said the military and airforce located the culprits’ enclave in an ongoing operation. In 2014, Boko Haram extremists abducted 276 girls from their school in the town of Chibok in northeast Borno State. Four years later, the extremists abducted 110 girls from another boarding school in northeast Yobe State.

Dig deeper: From the WORLD archives, read my report on the 2018 school abduction in Nigeria’s Yobe state.