Gunmen kidnapped 25 girls from a boarding school in Nigeria’s Kebbi State and killed at least one staffer, authorities said Monday.

The schoolgirls were taken around 4 a.m., and no group immediately claimed responsibility for the incident.

Police spokesperson Nafi’u Abubakar Kotarkoshi told The Associated Press the gunmen had “sophisticated weapons” and exchanged fire with guards before abducting the girls.

“A combined team is currently combing suspected escape routes and surrounding forests in a coordinated search and rescue operation aimed at recovering the abducted students and arresting the perpetrators,” he said, adding that one person was killed and another was injured.

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Abdulkarim Abdullahi Maga, a resident who said his daughter and granddaughter were abducted in the raid, told the AP that the attackers entered the school with motorcycles.

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“They first went straight to the teacher’s house and killed him before killing the guard,” said Maga.

The latest abductions come amid a string of mass kidnappings in northern Nigeria in recent years.

In 2024, 280 students were abducted from a school in Kaduna State and at least 200 others, mostly internally displaced women and children, were abducted in Borno State while reportedly searching for firewood, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk.

More than 200 schoolgirls were kidnapped from a Chibok secondary school in 2014 by Boko Haram militants, sparking international outrage and a #BringBackOurGirls campaign.