Gunmen abduct dozens of students in attack on Nigerian secondary school
Gunmen raided a secondary school in Lassa, in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno State, killing at least three people — including a soldier and a teacher, according to the military — and abducting dozens of students during exam time. About 37 students and one staff member remained missing , among them 25 female and 11 male students. Islamic State West Africa Province was blamed for the assault.
Mass abduction of students has become a recurring tactic for both armed groups and profit-driven “bandit” gangs across Nigeria’s conflict-hit north and center, a pattern running from the 2014 Chibok kidnapping through repeated raids since. Ransom demands and the difficulty of securing remote schools give attackers a reliable target, and recovery of the missing often takes weeks or longer.