More than 300 schoolgirls kidnapped in Nigeria

Armed men broke into the dormitories of a women's high school in the state of Zamfara, in northwestern Nigeria, at dawn this Friday, and kidnapped 317 young students, according to a statement from the state police.

"The Zamfara State Police in collaboration with the military has begun a joint search and an operation with the aim of rescuing the 317 students kidnapped by armed bandits at the Jangebe Government Secondary School for Science," the statement said.

The commissioner for Security and Home Affairs of the state, Alhaji Abubakar Dauran, confirmed the facts to the Nigerian News Agency (NAN).

"After most of the students were taken away, we rounded up those who escaped or hid from the bandits and conducted a census where we counted 54. We are still looking for the others."

The school housed about 400 students at the time of the abduction.

Sadi Kawaye, a teacher at the school, told Agence France Press that there were more than 300 missing girls.

The attack took place around one in the morning at the Government Secondary School located in the town of Jangebe.

Several residents told local media that the assailants arrived heavily armed aboard motorcycles and

vehicles

and that they forced the girls to get into the cars.

A teacher told

newspaper

that they were dressed in security guard uniforms, which caused some confusion.

This is the second mass kidnapping of students in Nigeria in just over a week after the one that took place on February 17 in the town of Kagara, in the central-western state of Niger.

On that occasion armed men abducted 42 people, including 27 male students, three teachers and 12 relatives of these.

All of them are still in the hands of their captors.

Last December 344 students were also abducted in Kankara, Katsina State, but all of them were released days later after a negotiation between kidnappers and the Government that has not been clarified.

• Armed men kidnap 42 people in Nigeria, mostly high school students

The situation of insecurity in schools in the north and west of Nigeria and the successive mass kidnappings have led the Senate to raise the possibility of declaring a state of emergency in the country.

The violence carried out by armed gangs dedicated to robbery and abduction of people has caused, just last year, the deaths of more than a thousand people, according to Amnesty International.

At the other end of the Nigerian north, to the northeast, the terrorist group Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for the grenade attack last Tuesday in the city of Maiduguri that caused at least 10 deaths and some 60 injured, including children who played soccer in a sports ground.

"Our brothers have attacked Maiduguri," said Abubakar Shekau, leader of Boko Haram in a video released on Thursday by the jihadist group, "we are happy, it was our men who carried out this attack," he added.