LAGOS - Security forces were scouring western Nigeria for two dozen kidnapped schoolgirls on Wednesday, a day after gunmen stormed a church service, killing two people in an attack captured on video.
Nigerian security forces have been placed on high alert, the information minister said, as the country faces an uncomfortable spotlight on its security situation.
The armed forces are still searching for 24 schoolgirls abducted by unidentified armed men from a secondary school in the northwestern town of Maga in Kebbi state during the night of Sunday to Monday.
One of the girls managed to escape, authorities said, but the school's vice-principal was killed.
In a separate attack on a church in western Nigeria on Tuesday, gunmen killed two people during a service that was recorded and broadcast online.
Both the church attack and girls' abduction come after US President Donald Trump earlier this month threatened military action over what he described as the killing of Nigeria's Christians, a narrative rejected by the Nigerian government.
In response to the violence, President Bola Tinubu "has put our nation's security apparatuses on the highest alert ever, and has deployed to actively pursue and eliminate terrorists, bandits and criminal elements wherever they may be in Nigeria", Information Minister Mohammed Idris said.
Vice-President Kashim Shettima travelled to Kebbi state on Wednesday to meet the victims' families and coordinate the security response with local authorities.
"We'll use every instrument of the state to bring these girls home and ensure that the perpetrators of this wickedness pay the full weight of justice," he told an assembly in the presence of the state governor, according to videos on local media.