Security forces in northwest Nigeria are intensifying their efforts to find the 25 schoolgirls abducted by gunmen in an early-morning raid on their school this week.

Police said men armed with rifles stormed Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School in Kebbi State’s Maga town approximately 4am local time (03:00 GMT) on Monday, arriving on motorcycles in an apparently well-planned attack.

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The attackers exchanged gunfire with police before scaling the perimeter fence and abducting the students. The assailants killed the school’s vice principal during the attack.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for abducting the girls, and their motivation was unclear.

On Tuesday, security teams swept nearby forests where gangs often hide, while others were deployed along major roads leading to the school.

Kebbi Governor Nasir Idris visited the school on Monday and assured of efforts to rescue the girls, and Lieutenant-General Waidi Shaibu, Nigeria’s chief of army staff met with soldiers in the hours after the attack and directed “intelligence-driven operations and relentless day-and-night pursuit of the abductors,” according to an army statement.

“We must find these children. Act decisively and professionally on all intelligence. Success is not optional,” Shaibu told troops during a visit to Kebbi on Tuesday. “You must continue day and night fighting.”

He urged the soldiers to “leave no stone unturned” in the search for the schoolgirls.

Monday’s raid was the second mass school abduction in Kebbi in four years, following a June 2021 incident when bandits took more than 100 students and staff members from a government college.

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Those students were released in batches over two years after parents raised ransoms. Some of the students were forcefully married and returned with babies.

At least 1,500 students have been kidnapped across the country since members of the Boko Haram armed group abducted 276 girls from their school in the town of Chibok on April 14, 2014.

In March 2024, more than 130 schoolchildren were rescued after spending more than two weeks in captivity in the Nigerian state of Kaduna.

Kidnapping draws ire from Trump supporters

While Kebbi State police told news wire AFP on Tuesday that the abducted schoolchildren were all Muslim, supporters of US President Donald Trump have seized on the tragedy to embolden their claim that Christians are under attack in Nigeria.

“While we don’t have all the details on this horrific attack, we know that the attack occurred in a Christian enclave in Northern Nigeria,” Republican Representative Riley Moore wrote on X.

Trump has threatened to invade Nigeria “guns-a-blazing” over what right-wing lawmakers in the US allege is a “Christian genocide“.

Nigeria has rejected the US president’s statements, saying the country’s various security crises have left more Muslims dead.