Boko Haram Abducts School Girls In Borno

File photo

Heavily armed Islamist gunmen yesterday kidnapped a group of girls from a secondary school in Borno state and torched the surrounding town.

According to an eyewitness in the town of Chibok where the attack took place, rampaging gunmen stormed the school in trucks and on motorcycles, they overpowered soldiers deployed to guard the school and abducted the young girls. The eyewitness said soldiers had been deployed to provide extra
security ahead of yearly exams, but the gunmen “subdued them and took the girls away”. He was not able to provide an estimate of the number of girls abducted.

The attackers are suspected to be members of Boko Haram as they have repeatedly attacked schools in the northeast during an insurgency that has killed thousands since 2009. In an attack earlier this year in Borno state, witnesses said Boko Haram gunmen surrounded a girls’ school, forced the students to leave and ordered them to immediately return to their villages.