Gunmen abduct women, children in northwestern Nigeria

By Rafiu Ajakaye

LAGOS, Nigeria (AA) - Gunmen have abducted at least two women and three children in northwestern Nigeria, police said Thursday.

The kidnapped children and women were taken from a state-run secondary school for girls in Zamfara state late Wednesday, police said.

"No student was abducted as earlier reported by some media. However, two caterers and three of their children were later discovered missing," police spokesman Mohamed Shehu said in a statement.

"The police is collaborating with the school authority to establish the whereabouts of the missing persons. To this end, a search-and-rescue operation team has been dispatched to the surrounding bushes for an extensive bush combing," he said.

Some local media outlets had claimed that many students were taken in the Zamfara raid.

The incident mirrored a 2014 mass abduction by Boko Haram militants where some 276 girls in a girls-only secondary school in Chibok town were kidnapped. The militants had also staged another mass kidnapping of 112 schoolgirls in February 2018.

In another indication of the worsening insecurity in Nigeria's northwestern region, gunmen on Wednesday night abducted the traditional head of the Buhari community, from which country's president, Muhammadu Buhari, hails.

Musa Umar, also the father to the president's aide-de-camp, was taken in front of his house in Daura.