More than 100 girls are missing after suspected Boko Haram militants attacked their school in northeastern Nigeria Monday night.
Residents said the militants attacked the town last week, demanding directions to the girls’ school and sending many fleeing into the surrounding bush amid the hail of gunfire.
The students’ disappearance may represent one of the largest kidnappings since the jihadist group abducted more than 270 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok in 2014. That case drew global attention to the insurgency and spawned the high profile social media campaign Bring Back Our Girls.
“The Federal Government has confirmed that 110 students of the Government Science and Technical College in Dapchi, Yobe State, are so far unaccounted for, after insurgents believed to be from a faction of Boko Haram invaded their school on Monday,” the information ministry said in a statement.
The information minister, Lai Mohammed, said police and security officials had been deployed to schools in the state while efforts were being stepped up to rescue the missing girls.
Yobe state government on Wednesday said dozens of the schoolgirls had been rescued by the military, sparking celebrations in the streets, but a day later it issued a statement saying the girls were mostly unaccounted for.
Boko Haram’s quest to establish a hard-line Islamic state in northeast Nigeria has left at least 20,000 dead and made more than 2.6 million others homeless since 2009.
> Shiuly Akter
