In the early hours of Monday, more than two dozen schoolgirls were abducted from their beds at a boarding school in north-west Kebbi State, Nigeria.
Armed with rifles, the kidnappers arrived on motorcycles, scaled the school fence, and shot and killed the vice-principal as he tried to protect his students.
The gunmen abducted 25 girls from the Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School in the town of Maga.
One child managed to escape.
Nigeria has a disturbing history of school attacks, with hundreds of kidnappings carried out in the region since the 2014 Chibok abductions.
As parents wait in hope that their children will be found alive, international pressure is mounting on the nation's government to bring them home.
Families recount attacks
The wife of the school's murdered vice-principal told Nigerian television she had tried to wake her husband up after hearing noise outside their house before the gunmen burst in.
"Three of them entered and asked my husband, 'Are you Malam Hassan?' and he responded, 'Yes, I am.' They told him that 'We are here to kill you,'" Amina Hassan said.
"We started struggling with them and one of them pulled out his gun and shot my husband, then he dragged me by my hand outside the house.
"I was still arguing with them when my daughter came out, then they left me and went to her and took her with them."
Abdulkarim Abdullahi, whose 13-year-old daughter and 10-year-old granddaughter were abducted, said he overheard the noise from his house.
"I was at home when I suddenly heard gunshots from the school," he said.
Another father of two girls who were kidnapped said he heard about the attack after dawn prayers at a mosque.
"Since yesterday we haven't eaten and my wife is in tears — I can't even go back home to see her because I know how distraught she is," Nazifi Isa told Reuters.
Search efforts have intensified over the last two days, with Major General Waidi Shaibu urging his soldiers to "leave no stone unturned".
"You must continue day and night fighting. We must find these children," he said.
'Strategic kidnappings'
Monday's raid was the second mass school abduction in Kebbi in four years.
In June 2021 attackers took more than 100 students and staff members from a government college.
Those students were released in batches over two years after parents raised ransoms.
Some of the students were forcefully married off and returned with babies.
[datawrapper map]Kebbi is caught between the jihadist threat from neighbouring Niger and criminal gangs who kidnap and kill residents in the north of Africa's most populous country.
Boko Haram jihadi extremists and bandits are active in the region and analysts say gangs often target schools to gain attention.
They blame the insecurity on a failure to prosecute known attackers and the rampant corruption that limits the supply of weapons to security forces while ensuring a steady supply to the gangs.
"Let's say people have been kidnapped in the markets — it doesn't go far. If people have been kidnapped on the road, it doesn't go far," Institute for Security Studies analyst Oluwole Ojewale said.
"What gains traction is … strategic kidnapping, like [that of] schoolchildren."
Kebbi South Senator Garba Maidoki said "economic terrorists" were behind the attack.
"These are people [who] steal cows, goods, take people for ransom — they are not the type to hoist [a] flag, or from any ideology," he told Politics Today.
Senator Maidoki also told the outlet authorities had "a fair idea" the girls were in Kebbi South.
"There is high hope that the girls will return home in one or two days," he said.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Rising Trump tensions
The attack drew fresh attention from the US following President Donald Trump's threats of military intervention over the alleged targeting of Christians 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.
But state police said the abducted children in the school attack were all Muslim.
Earlier this month Mr Trump threatened to invade Nigeria "guns-a-blazing" over claims of a "Christian genocide".
Nigeria rejected that claim, insisting that the country's various security crises have left more Muslim dead.
Africa's most populous country is divided between a predominantly Christian south and a Muslim-majority north.
Nigeria is the scene of numerous conflicts, including jihadist insurgencies, which kill both Christians and Muslim, often indiscriminately.
Nigeria's Foreign Ministry said the country would keep fighting violent extremism and that it hoped Washington would remain a close ally, saying it "will continue to defend all citizens, irrespective of race, creed, or religion".
Echoes of Chibok girls
The attack echoed Boko Haram's 2014 kidnapping of more than 300 mostly Christian Chibok girls, which sparked global outrage.
Some of those girls escaped, others were released after years in captivity and negotiations with their abductors, but many have never returned.
Attacks on schools and the abduction of students remain a major barrier to learning in Nigeria.
A UNICEF report released last year found that only 37 per cent of schools across 10 states have early warning systems to detect threats.
ABC/wires
