Abuja: More than 100 teenage girls were abducted Monday in northeastern Nigeria by suspected Boko Haram members, local sources and police said.
The victims were taken from the Girls College in Northern Borno state’s Chibok Town, Xinhua quoted Lawan Tanko, local police chief as saying.
Law enforcement agents are investigating the abduction and strategies are being mapped out to rescue the teenagers, he said without giving further detail.
About 105 teenage girls were selected by gunmen, who stormed the school dormitories in a raid that lasted more than four hours. The all-female college is said to have at least 250 students, residents said.
The gunmen killed a military officer and injured some residents who tried to resist the attack, said a local resident.
“None of the students was killed, but they were seriously manhandled as the gunmen handpicked them. We could not rescue the girls,” he said.
Borno state police commissioner Tanko Lawan said some of the girls were abducted Monday night from a school in Chibok, on the edge of the Sambisa Forest that is an insurgent hideout.
Islamic extremists have been abducting girls to use as cooks and sex slaves.
The President of the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, Ayo Oritsejafor, has condemned Monday’s bomb explosion in Abuja. He said the perpetrators are not human beings and their corpses should be given to pigs when they die.
“This is very inhumane, ungodly and barbaric. I don’t even have the adjectives to describe what these mad people have done,†Mr. Oritsejafor said in a statement on Tuesday.
About two months ago, more than 40 government college students were slain in Buni Yadi in neighbouring Yobe state.
(With IANS Inputs)