Police and army mobilise after hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls taken in mass abduction

Unidentified gunmen have seized more than 300 schoolgirls in a night-time raid on a school in north-west Nigeria and are believed to be holding some of them in a nearby forest.

It was the second such kidnapping in little over a week in a region increasingly targeted by militants and criminal gangs. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Police in Zamfara state said they had begun search-and-rescue operations with the army to find the “armed bandits” who took the 317 girls from the Government Girls Science Secondary…