Gunmen in Nigeria's northwestern Kaduna state kidnap students: police

Gunmen in Nigeria's northwestern Kaduna state kidnapped a number of students from a college late on Thursday, a police spokesman and a state government official said today.

Kaduna police spokesman Mohammed Jalige said the attack took place at a college specialising in forestry. "We are yet to ascertain the number of the victims kidnapped," he said.

A series of school abductions in recent months has led many Nigerians to worry that regional authorities are making the situation worse by letting kidnappers go unpunished or paying them off.

Within the last few weeks, 279 schoolgirls were freed after being abducted from their boarding school in northwest Nigeria, and 27 teenage boys were kidnapped from their school in the north-central state of Niger.

President Muhammadu Buhari said the practice of paying ransoms had encouraged kidnappers.