KANO: Gunmen in northern Nigeria set fire to staff residential building at a girls’ secondary school on Sunday but the 195 students sleeping in their nearby dormitories were unharmed, police and a teacher said.

The attack in Bauchi state came less than a week after Boko Haram Islamists kidnapped 129 teenage schoolgirls from the Chibok area of Borno state in the northeast. Forty-four of those girls have since escaped.

“At about 2:30 am (0130 GMT), unknown gunmen carried out coordinated attacks in Yana town,” Bauchi’s police spokesman Haruna Mohammed said.