Gunmen from a criminal gang kidnapped 25 people and killed a staff member in an early morning raid on a northwestern Nigerian girls’ secondary school on Monday, police said.

The latest attack comes more than a decade after nearly 300 girls were abducted from Chibok in the restive northeastern region and sparked international outcry.

Police said the gang, armed with “sophisticated weapons, shooting sporadically, stormed the Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School” in Kebbi state at about 4:00 am (0300 GMT).

Police were deployed but “unfortunately, the suspected bandits had already scaled through the fence of the school and abducted twenty-five students from their hostel to unknown destination,” police said in a statement.

A staff member was shot dead while another was injured during the attack, police said.

Nigeria’s northwest has for years been terrorised by criminal gangs known as “bandits” who steal cattle, raid villages, kidnap and kill residents, and loot and burn homes.

It has also been plagued by armed violence since the 2009 emergence of the Boko Haram group in the Lake Chad basin, in the northeast of the country.

Police said police tactical units, military personnel, and vigilantes have “been deployed in the area and they are currently combing the bandits’ routes and nearby forest” in a bid to rescue the abducted students.