ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Gunmen attacked a high school in northwestern Nigeria before dawn on Monday, abducting 25 schoolgirls, killing one staffer and injuring another, police said of the latest abduction of students in the region.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the abductions from the boarding school in Kebbi state and their motivation is unclear.

Nigeria is facing a multi-dimensional security challenge, specifically from amorphous groups of armed bandits who specialize in kidnapping for ransom — sometimes totaling thousands of dollars — and have been responsible for several high-profile abductions across Nigeria’s northern region. Kidnappings, attacks on villages and along major roads have become common because of the limited security presence.

Those bandits are not connected to militant groups such as Boko Haram and the splinter group Islamic State West Africa Province, whose attacks on communities and government installations are motivated by religion.

Police said the boarding school girls were taken from their dorms at 4:00 a.m. Monday. The school is in Maga, in the state's Danko-Wasagu area, police spokesperson Nafi’u Abubakar Kotarkoshi said.

The assailants were armed with “sophisticated weapons” and exchanged fire with guards before abducting the girls, Kotarkoshi said.

“A combined team is currently combing suspected escape routes and surrounding forests in a coordinated search and rescue operation aimed at recovering the abducted students and arresting the perpetrators,” the spokesperson said.

Armed groups have targeted school children in the region since 2014, when Boko Haram abducted 276 students from Chibok in Borno state. That abduction marked the beginning of a new era of fear, and dozens remain in captivity.

Since the Chibok abductions, at least 1,500 students have been kidnapped, as armed groups increasingly find in abductions a lucrative way to fund other crimes and control villages in the nation’s mineral-rich but poorly policed region. In March 2024, more than 130 schoolchildren were rescued after spending more than two weeks in captivity in the Nigerian state of Kaduna.