KANO, Nigeria — Unidentified gunmen kidnapped 317 schoolgirls from the town of Jangebe in northwest Nigeria on Friday, police said, the second such kidnapping in little over a week.
A surge in armed militancy has led to a breakdown of security in the north of Africa’s most populous country, where school kidnappings are becoming endemic.
“The Zamfara State Police Command in collaboration with the military have commenced a joint search and rescue operation with a view to rescuing the 317 students kidnapped by the armed bandits in Government Girls Science Secondary School Jangebe,” police said in a statement.
The rise in abductions is fuelled in part by sizeable government pa…
Keep on reading: Gunmen abduct 317 schoolgirls in northwest Nigeria as security collapses