Hundreds of Students Missing after Attack on Nigerian School

Hundreds of students are feared missing after gunmen attacked a high school in northwestern Nigeria.

The attackers arrived on the motorbikes and began shooting in the air, causing people to run, the witnesses said, reports BBC.

They targeted the Government Science Secondary School – where more than 800 students are said to live – in Katsina State on Friday evening.

On Saturday, the army said they had positioned the gunmen's hiding place in the forest and exchanged gunfire with them.

The result was unclear, but officials said that there were no reports of students being injured.

Meanwhile, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari condemned the attack and directed the school to carry out a full student audit to find out how many were missing. Parents who went to school to take their children home were also asked to inform the school authorities.

Residents living near the all-boy boarding school in the Kankara area told the BBC that they heard gunshots at around 23:00 (22:00 GMT) on Friday, and that the assault lasted more than an hour.

Security personnel at the school managed to repel some of the attackers before police reinforcements arrived, officials said.

In a statement on Saturday, the police said that some of the gunmen were forced to withdraw during an exchange of fire. Students have been able to climb the school fence and escape to safety, they said.

Approximately 200 students who had fled-and were briefly found missing-returned later. Witnesses, however, said they saw a number of students being carried away by gunmen.

One police officer was taken to hospital after being shot and wounded, police said.

Several local residents on Saturday said they had joined the police in searching for the students who remained missing, while many parents said they had withdrawn their children from the school.

"The school is deserted, all the students have vacated," one witness, Nura Abdullahi, told AFP news agency.

"Some of the students who escaped returned to the town this morning, but others took a bus home," he added.

The governor of Katsina, Aminu Bello Massari, has ordered the immediate closure of all boarding schools in the state.

Katsina is the home state of President Buhari, who is currently there for a week-long private visit.

"I strongly condemn the cowardly bandits' attack on innocent children at the Science School, Kankara," he said in a statement. "Our prayers are with the families of the students, the school authorities and the injured."

The attack on Friday took place two days after the abduction of a village leader and 20 others in another part of the state.

In 2014, more than 270 girls were abducted from a school in the north-eastern Nigerian town of Chibok by militant Islamist group Boko Haram.

No group has yet said that they have carried out a raid on the school in Katsina, far from Boko Haram's normal area of activity in the north-east.