Saturday’s attack was the third mass kidnapping in northern Nigeria since late last week.
Armed men broke into a boarding school in northwestern Nigeria early Saturday and seized 15 children as they slept, police told The Associated Press, about 48 hours in the conflict-hit region.
School abductions are common in Nigeria’s northern region, especially since the 2014 kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls by Islamic extremists in Borno state’s shocked the world. Armed gangs have since targeted schools for kidnap ransoms, resulting in at least 1,400 abducted since then.
The gunmen in the latest attack invaded the Gidan Bakuso village of the Gada council area in Sokoto state at about 1 a.m. local time, police said. They headed to the Islamic school where they seized the children from their hostel before security forces could arrive, Sokoto police spokesman Ahmad Rufa’i told the AP.
