Hundreds of students were still missing in Nigeria on Monday after gunmen attacked a boys-only secondary school in its Katsina state last Friday, local and international media reported.

The incident has evoked memories of the 2014 kidnap of nearly 280 female students from a high school in the town of Chibok in Borno state by Islamic group Boko Haram. More than 100 of those girls are still missing to this day.

In the latest incident, Britain’s Guardian newspaper quoted government officials as saying a large group of men armed with AK-47s had swooped on the Government Science school in Kankara on Friday night, shooting local security.

The paper said the attack was believed to have been by so-called “bandit gangs”. Officials were combing through nearby forests for 333 students and contacting parents to try and establish exactly how many boys had been kidnapped.

In its latest Twitter post on the incident, dated Saturday, the Nigerian Presidency said President Muhammadu Buhari had been briefed by Katsina governor Aminu Bello Masari and the army chief of staff about the school attack, and military personnel had located the bandits’ enclave in Kankara.

The military operation was being supported by air power and Buhari had also directed the reinforcement of security of all schools, the Presidency added.

In a statement on his own Twitter account on Sunday, Masari said after visiting the school and community the previous day, he had met with the “top echelon of the nation’s defense machinery led by the Minister Gen Bashir Salihi Magashi, all in our determination to save the innocent children abducted by the bandits”.

“No stone will be left unturned in achieving this all important goal,” he said.

“Our prayers and sympathies are with their families. We are indeed in one of our most trying moments; as a government, as a state and as a people.”