Icon: enlarge
Shoes left behind after a raid on a Nigerian school (archive image)
Photo: Afolabi Sotunde / REUTERS
Once again, several hundred children have been kidnapped from a school in northern Nigeria.
According to the police, 317 girls from the Government Girls Science Secondary School in Jangebe were abducted by "armed bandits".
The attack on Friday night had already been reported, but it was initially unclear how many schoolgirls were kidnapped.
The police of the state of Zamfara have started a search and rescue operation together with the military.
At least some of the students should be in a forest near the school.
Attacks by criminals are increasing
For years, attacks by criminal gangs have been increasing in the north-west and central Nigeria.
The attack on the girls' school is now the third mass kidnapping in Nigeria this month.
Previously, 53 occupants of a bus were abducted.
You are now free again.
In the past week, gunmen kidnapped dozens of children and three teachers in western Nigeria.
A student was also shot.
According to the AFP news agency, the gangs act primarily for financial reasons and have no known ideological orientations.
However, there are growing concerns that they may be cooperating with jihadists from the northeast.
The radical Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram, whose name translates as "Western education is sin", gained worldwide fame through the mass kidnapping of schoolchildren.
It has been terrorizing the population in northern Nigeria for years.
In the decades-long conflict between the group and the Nigerian army, many displaced persons are still missing.
It is still unclear who is behind the recent kidnapping of the more than 300 girls.
Icon: The mirror
fek / dpa / AFP / Reuters
