A Christian group on Saturday said 315 students and teachers were seized a day earlier in Nigeria鈥檚 second mass school abduction in a week, as security fears mounted in Africa鈥檚 most populous nation.
The early Friday raid on St Mary鈥檚 co-education school in Niger state in central Nigeria came after gunmen on Monday stormed a secondary school in neighbouring Kebbi state, abducting 25 girls.
The Christian Association of Nigeria said the new number came 鈥榓fter a verification exercise鈥� following the early Friday mass kidnapping, and added that 鈥楾he number of victims abducted ... is now 303 students and 12 teachers.鈥�
The number of boys and girls kidnapped from St Mary鈥檚 is almost half of the school鈥檚 student population of 629.
The Nigerian government has not commented on the number of students and teachers abducted.
Authorities in the nearby states of Katsina and Plateau have meanwhile ordered all schools to close as a precautionary measure.
The Niger state government closed many schools and president Bola Tinubu cancelled international engagements, including attending the G20 summit in Johannesburg, to handle the crisis.
The two abduction operations and an attack on a church in the west of the country, in which two people were killed, have happened since US president Donald Trump threatened military action over what he called the killing of Christians by radical Islamists in Nigeria.
Nigeria is still scarred by the kidnapping of nearly 300 girls by Boko Haram jihadists at Chibok in northestern Borno state more than a decade ago. Some of those girls are still missing.
CAN said Reverend Bulus Dauwa Yohanna, who is also the Catholic Bishop of Kontagora diocese under which the school falls, gave the update after visiting St Mary鈥檚.
鈥楢fter we left the school at Papiri, we decided to make calls, do verification exercise and do further enquiries on those we had thought escaped successfully, only to discover that 88 more students were also captured after they tried to escape,鈥� he said.
鈥楾his now makes it 303 students, including 12 teachers鈥�4 females and 8 males鈥攂ringing the total to number of abducted persons to 315,鈥� he said in a statement.
For years, heavily armed criminal gangs have been intensifying attacks in rural areas of northwest and central Nigeria, where there is little state presence, killing thousands and conducting kidnappings for ransom.
The gangs have camps in a vast forest straddling several states including Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna, Sokoto, Kebbi and Niger.
A UN source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the children abducted on Monday in Kebbi had probably been taken to the Birnin Gwari forest in nearby Kaduna state.
In a separate attack on a church in western Nigeria on Tuesday, gunmen killed two people during a service that was being broadcast online. Dozens of worshippers are believed to have been abducted.
As Nigeria grapples with security challenges on several fronts, hostage-taking has spiralled nationwide and become a favoured tactic of bandit gangs and jihadists.
Although bandits have no ideological leanings and are motivated by financial gain, their increasing alliance with jihadists from the northeast has been a source of concern for authorities and security analysts.
Jihadists have for 16 years been waging an insurrection in the northeast with the aim of establishing a Caliphate.