A group of girls who were abducted from a boarding school in Nigeria have been released and are "safe", reports say.
Gunmen abducted 317 students from the Girls Science Secondary School in Jangebe town, Zamfara state, on Friday.
But Dr Bello Matawalle, the state's governor, says the girls are "now safe".
The men who ransacked the school, had also attacked a nearby military camp and checkpoint, preventing soldiers from intervening.
Lawani Adali, the security man on duty on the day, said policemen and vigilantes could not get inside because the gunmen had blocked all entrances.
He said there was heavy firing as they were shouting "Allahu akbar" or "God is great".
Several large groups of armed men operate in Zamfara state, described by the government as bandits, and are known to kidnap for money and for the release of their members from jail.
Such kidnappings in Nigeria were first carried out by jihadist group Boko Haram, and later its offshoot Islamic State
West Africa Province, but the tactic has now been adopted by other criminal gangs.
The raid in Zamfara state was the second such kidnapping in little over a week in the northwest, a region increasingly
targeted by criminal gangs.
On Saturday, gunmen released 27 teenage boys who were kidnapped from their school on 17 February in the north-central state of Niger.
