At least 200 girls were abducted by gunmen from their school in northeastern Nigeria on late Monday, parents said.
Parents of girls at the Government Girls' Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State, reportedly said the gunmen ordered the hostel's teenage residents on to four trucks, BBC News reported.
After the attackers set fire to 170 houses and a local government building, hundreds of residents fled, Nigeria's Daily Post newspaper reported. A police officer and a soldier were killed in the melee, the Post said.
According to NBC News, the attackers are believed to be members of the Islamist militant group, Boko Haram, which was blamed for a bus station bombing that killed 71 people on Monday in Nigeria's 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," BBC News reported.
Although no confirmations were made about the abductions, the Chibok hostel attack was confirmed by the police.
Explosions followed by gunfire were heard by residents in the area 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," the AFP news agency quotes Emmanuel Sam, an education official in Chibok, as saying.
Soldiers who had been deployed to provide extra security ahead of annual exams were overpowered by the gunmen, another witness, who requested anonymity, told AFP.
"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," according to BBC News. "The schoolgirl said the men loaded the food items in the store into a truck and ordered some of the girls to climb in."
BBC News continued, "The other girls were packed into a bus and two other trucks, one carrying sacks of food and the other petrol."
After crossing three villages, one of the trucks developed a fault and had to slow down. About 10 to 15 girls grabbed the opportunity to jump out of the convoy and escape into the bushes.
Boko Haram's militants have murdered more than 1,500 civilians in three states in north-east Nigeria this year. All of them have been declared to be under a state of emergency, BBC News reported.
