By Ahmed Kingimi
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria, June 29 (Reuters) – Gunmen burst into a secondary school in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno state and abducted students as they were sitting exams on Monday morning, police said, the latest mass kidnapping in an insecure region.
The military said troops rescued 10 students and teachers after tracking the attackers and engaging in a firefight, in which one soldier and one member of a paramilitary support force were killed.
Other students were still unaccounted for and officials were trying to work out how many were missing, Borno police spokesperson Nahum Kenneth Daso said.
The attackers had fired sporadically as they charged into Government Day Secondary School in the town of Lassa in the morning, where students were taking national examinations usually sat by 16- and 17-year-olds, Daso said.
The military, police and other security agencies were searching nearby forests to try to rescue the students, Daso said.
The 10 who were rescued were unharmed and receiving care, while efforts to find others still missing were ongoing, military spokesperson Captain Mohammed Goni said.
Nigeria is grappling with overlapping security crises that stretch far beyond the jihadist insurgency in the northeast, where Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) have waged a conflict for more than 15 years.
Borno is the epicentre of the Islamist insurgency, while other parts of Nigeria face mass kidnappings for ransom by armed gangs and recurring sectarian violence.
(Additional reporting by Tife Owolabi in Yenagoa; Writing by Chijioke Ohuocha and Elisha Bala-Gbogbo; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
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