Gunmen abducted six girls and two staff members Thursday from a boarding school in a northern Nigerian region notorious for banditry and ransom kidnappings, police said.
Armed men gained entry into the Engravers College, a mixed boarding school in a remote area just south of the city of Kaduna, police spokesman Yakubu Sabo said.
"(They) took away two staff of the college and six female students to an unknown destination," Sabo said.
The school, which hosts girls and boys, is located far to the west of an area notorious for attacks by the Boko Haram jihadist group.
Boko Haram grabbed headlines around the world in 2014 for the abduction of 276 schoolgirls from the remote northeastern town of Chibok in Borno state.
The police said they had deployed units "to the area for possible rescue of the victims and arresting the perpetrators."
It said officers were "doing everything possible to secure the release of all the victims unhurt".
The bursar at the school confirmed the kidnapping to AFP.
"Unknown gunmen broke into the school around 12:10 am (2310 GMT) and took away six female students and two staff who live inside the school," Elvis Allah-Yaro said.
Abductions for ransom are common in Nigeria and the highway from the capital Abuja to the city of Kaduna has seen a surge in attacks by armed criminals, but raids on schools are rare.