Gunmen attacked a secondary school in the town of Lassa, in Nigeria’s north-eastern Borno State, on Monday morning, abducting an unknown number of students as they sat for national examinations. Witnesses said the assailants, suspected members of Boko Haram or its offshoot the Islamic State West Africa Province, entered the Government Day Secondary School compound around 8:30 a.m. and opened fire, killing a teacher who refused to follow them and wounding another.

Military officials confirmed that troops from Operation Hadin Kai, supported by air surveillance, engaged the attackers near the Daggu area and rescued ten victims—students and teachers—who were unharmed. One Nigerian soldier and a member of a local paramilitary Civilian Joint Task Force were killed during the firefight, according to a military spokesperson. The army said the fleeing militants suffered casualties and seven motorcycles were seized.

In the hours after the raid, parents began compiling a register of missing children at the request of local authorities. By Tuesday, 36 names had been listed, according to several families who spoke to journalists. A local government report presented to a state delegation put the total number of affected individuals at 39, including three teaching staff and 36 students—25 of them female, drawn from senior secondary classes one through three. Amnesty International Nigeria, citing its own sources, said two teachers and one student were killed, a figure that diverges from the military’s account of one teacher shot dead at the scene.

A high-powered state delegation led by the commissioner for education visited Lassa on Tuesday to assess the situation, but the mission was cut short when angry youths and relatives of the missing students confronted the officials, chanting “Go and bring back our children” and forcing them to withdraw. The Borno State government subsequently ordered the temporary closure of all schools in the Lassa, Dille, and Chul communities, though students sitting ongoing examinations will be relocated to a school in Uba town. Search operations continue in nearby forests, and authorities have not yet confirmed a final number of those still held captive.