More than 300 children and 12 teachers have been abducted by gunmen during an attack on St Mary’s School in northcentral Nigeria’s Niger state, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) said.

The earlier tally of 215 was changed “after a verification exercise and a final census was carried out”, according to a statement issued by the Most Rev Bulus Dauwa Yohanna, chairman of the Niger state chapter of CAN, who visited the Catholic school on Friday.

The kidnapping in Niger state’s remote Papiri community happened four days after 25 schoolchildren were seized in similar circumstances in neighbouring Kebbi state’s Maga town, 170km (106 miles) away.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the abductions and authorities have said tactical squads have been deployed alongside local hunters to rescue the children.

Students in 47 boarding schools owned by the federal government have been asked to vacate, according to a circular from the ministry of education.

Nigeria faces a crisis of mass abduction of students, with at least five recorded incidents since president Bola Tinubu took office in May 2023.

The crime became more frequent under his predecessor, the late president Muhammadu Buhari, who came to power in 2015 promising to tackle the scourge of insecurity in Africa’s most populous country.

US president Donald Trump has cited the incidents to reinforce his claim that Christians are being persecuted in Nigeria. On Friday, secretary of defence Pete Hegseth met Nigeria’s National Security Adviser Nuhu Ribadu to express the administration’s assertion that Christians in the west African country have been singled out for “horrific violence”.

Organised atrocities against civilians punctuate Nigeria’s long history of ethnic discord, and Muslims as well as Christians have been victims.

But the notion of Christians being singled out for persecution eventually took root in right-wing circles. – Agencies