Heavily armed Boko Haram Islamists have abducted more than 100 girls from a secondary school in northeast Nigeria, sparking a search by soldiers to track down the attackers.
Some of the schoolgirls in the Chibok area of southern Borno state narrowly escaped their kidnappers by jumping off a truck in the middle of the night as the gunmen sought to cart them away, according to multiple witnesses.
A security source who requested anonymity said the attackers were members of Boko Haram, a radical group whose name means “Western education is forbidden.”
The group has repeatedly attacked schools in the northeast during an insurgency that has killed thousands since 2009.
Asked to confirm media reports that 200 girls had been taken from the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, the source said: “The number is not up to 200, but it is over 100.”
The gunmen stormed the town after sundown, torching several buildings before opening fire on troops who were guarding the school, said Chibok resident Salisu Ibrahim in an account supported by other witnesses.
The Islamists loaded the girls onto trucks and drove away, multiple witnesses said.
“We were able to follow the path of the truck and we found it broke down deep in the bush,” the security source told AFP.
“We are now trying to locate the whereabouts of the abducted girls,” he added.
The gunmen came “in trucks and on motorcycles and headed to the school”, where they overpowered soldiers deployed to guard it, said a witness who requested anonymity.
He said soldiers had been deployed to provide extra security ahead of yearly exams, but the gunmen “subdued the soldiers and took the girls away”. [AFP]
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