File photo: Nigerian police deployed in June 2021. PIUS UTOMI EKPEI/AFP via Getty Images

More than two dozen schoolgirls have been abducted and one staffer has been killed after gunmen attacked a high school in northwestern Nigeria, police said in the region.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the abductions of 25 girls from the boarding school in Kebbi state, and the motivation for the attack is unclear.

Nigeria has been facing a multi-dimensional security challenge with threats from a range of different groups. Armed bandits who specialize in kidnapping for ransom — sometimes totaling thousands of dollars — have been responsible for several high-profile abductions across Nigeria's northern region. Kidnappings and attacks on villages and along major roads have become common because of the limited security presence.

Those bandits are not connected to militant groups such as Boko Haram and the splinter group Islamic State West Africa Province, whose attacks on communities and government installations are motivated by religion.

Police said the boarding school girls were taken from their dorms at about 4 a.m. Monday. The school is in Maga, in the state's Danko-Wasagu area, police spokesperson Nafi'u Abubakar Kotarkoshi said.

The assailants were armed with "sophisticated weapons" and exchanged fire with guards before abducting the girls, Kotarkoshi said.

"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," the spokesperson said.

Attacks have targeted schoolchildren in the region since at least 2014, when Boko Haram abducted 276 students from Chibok in Borno state. That abduction marked the beginning of a new era of fear. Dozens remain in captivity.

Since the Chibok abductions, at least 1,500 students have been kidnapped, as armed groups increasingly find in abductions a lucrative way to fund other crimes and control villages in the nation's mineral-rich but poorly policed region. In March 2024, more than 130 schoolchildren were rescued after spending more than two weeks in captivity in the Nigerian state of Kaduna.

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