Boko Haram abduct more than 100 schoolgirls

Heavily armed Boko Haram Islamists kidnapped more than 100 girls from a school in northeast Nigeria, sparking a search by soldiers to track down the attackers, a security source and witnesses said on Tuesday.
The unprecedented mass abduction in Borno state came hours after a bomb blast ripped through a crowded bus station on the outskirts of Abuja, killing 75 people, the deadliest attack ever in Nigeria’s capital.
The violence underscored the serious threat the Islamists pose to Africa’s most populous country, with the group capable of carrying out large-scale attacks in remote areas and massive bombings in major urban centres. Gunmen stormed the Government Girls Secondary School in the Chibok area of Borno after sundown on Monday, torching several buildings before opening fire on soldiers and police who were guarding the school, witnesses said.
They ultimately overpowered the guards and entered the school, said Emmanuel Sam, an education officer based in Chibok who fled to the state capital Maiduguri after the attack. The girls were then forced onto trucks and driven away by the attackers, multiple witnesses said.
A security source who requested anonymity said more than 100 girls were taken and blamed the attack on Boko Haram, a radical group whose name means “Western education is forbidden”.

“We were able to follow the path of the truck and we found it broke down deep in the bush,” the source said. “We are now trying to locate the whereabouts of the abducted girls,” he added.