Around 100 girls are thought to have been abducted in an attack on a school in north-east Nigeria, officials say.
Gunmen reportedly arrived at the school in Chibok, Borno state, late last night, and ordered the hostel's teenage residents on to lorries.
The attackers are believed to be from the Islamist group, Boko Haram, whose militants frequently target schools.
On Monday, bombings blamed on the group killed more than 70 people in the capital, Abuja.
Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is forbidden" in the local Hausa language, has been waging an armed campaign for an Islamic state in northern Nigeria.
The exact number of missing students had yet to be established, as some of the girls had managed to return to their homes. Residents in the area reported hearing explosions followed by gunfire last night, said BBC reporter Mohammed Kabir Mohammed in the capital, Abuja.
"Many girls were abducted by the rampaging gunmen who stormed the school in a convoy of vehicles," AFP news agency quotes Emmanuel Sam, an education official in Chibok, as saying.
A student, who did not wish to be named and managed to escape, told the BBC they were sleeping when armed men burst into their hostel and asked to be shown the school's store.
The schoolgirl said the men loaded the food items in the store into a truck and ordered some of the girls to climb in.
The other girls were packed into a bus and two other trucks, one carrying sacks of food and the other petrol.
The girl said the convoy had passed about three villages when the truck she was in developed a fault and was forced to slow down. This gave her and about 10 to 15 other girls the opportunity to jump off and escape into the bush.
The government recently said that Boko Haram's activities were confined to that part of the country.
However, Monday's bombings in Abuja prompted renewed fears that the militants were extending their campaign to the capital.
This brings us to the question: WHY IS THIS SUBCONTINENT CALLED NIGERIA STILL WAGE A ONE-NATION-GAMPAIGN WHEN EVEN THE BLIND SEES NIGERIA HAS NEVER BEEN, IST AND WILL NEVER BE ONE COUNTRY? http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-27037181
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