MAIDUGURI, Nigeria >> More than 300 children and staff are thought to have been abducted from a Catholic school in Nigeria this week, one of the worst mass kidnappings ever recorded there.

The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) said today it had raised its estimate of those taken from St Mary’s School in Niger state on Friday to 315 from an earlier estimate of 227 following a “verification exercise.”

“This now makes it 303 students (and) … 12 teachers, bringing the total number of abducted persons to 315,” it said in a statement, adding the new figure included 88 students who had been captured as they tried to escape.

The kidnapping comes amid a surge of attacks by armed groups and Islamist insurgents in Nigeria, which has been under heightened scrutiny since President Donald Trump

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