LAGOS, Nigeria -- Islamic militants killed hundreds of people in an attack on a border town in Nigeria's remote northeast, escalating the country's violent insurrection in which more than 270 schoolgirls have been kidnapped.

As many as 300 people were killed when a band of extremists attacked the town of Gamboru Ngala, on Nigeria's border with Cameroon, according to local media reports.

The attack and hundreds of casualties were confirmed Wednesday by Borno state Information Commissioner Mohammed Bulama. Shops and homes were set ablaze and razed in the attack, he said.

The news of the attack adds to Nigeria's growing crisis from the Islamic extremists' violent campaign of bombings, attacks and abductions. The militant Boko Haram rebels are holding captive 276 teenage students, after abducting them from their boarding school in Chibok, also in northeastern Borno state.

In the attack on Gamboru Ngala, the militants sprayed gunfire into the crowds of people at a busy market that was open Monday night when temperatures drop in the semidesert region, reported ThisDay newspaper.

Nigerian federal Sen. Ahmed Zannah said the attack lasted about 12 hours, according to the newspaper. The insurgents set homes on fire and gunned down residents who tried to escape from the flames, reported the paper.

Zannah blamed fighters of Nigeria's homegrown Boko Haram terrorist network, which has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of the teenage girls and is threatening to sell them into slavery.

Boko Haram's 5-year-old Islamic uprising has claimed the lives of thousands of Muslims and Christians. More than 1,500 people have died in their attacks so far this year.

The insurgents say Western influences are corrupting and they want to impose an Islamic state in Nigeria, a country of 170 million of whom half are Christian.

Nigerian police offered a $300,000 reward Wednesday for information leading to the rescue of the schoolgirls.

The reward is a huge amount in Nigeria's most poverty-stricken region, where unemployment is high and the economy has been destroyed by the Boko Haram insurgency.

Nigerian police published six telephone hotline numbers for those with information on the location of the missing girls.

"While calling on the general public to be part of the solution to the present security challenge, the Police High Command also reassures all citizens that any information given would be treated anonymously and with utmost confidentiality," a police statement said.

Meanwhile, security was tight Wednesday in the capital, Abuja, for the beginning of the World Economic Forum in Africa, the continent's version of the international conference held in Davos, Switzerland. The clampdown came amid fears that Boko Haram might unleash another terrorist attack after two recent bombings in Abuja killed dozens of civilians.

A U.S. team has been sent to Nigeria to help trace the girls and recover them. On Wednesday, France added to that effort and offers from Britain to send help. France, with several thousand troops fighting other Islamist militants in Mali, offered an intelligence unit.

Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren said fewer than 10 troops are being sent as part of the larger U.S. assistance team to include State Department and Justice Department personnel. The military members will help with communications, logistics and intelligence-planning.

The U.S. has no plans to launch any military operations, the Pentagon said Wednesday.

Warren said the U.S. was talking with Nigeria about information and intelligence-sharing, but nothing has been decided.

There are already about 70 military personnel in Nigeria, including 50 regularly assigned to the embassy, and 20 Marines have been there for training.

At the State Department, spokesman Jen Psaki said the department was moving swiftly to put a team in place at the U.S. Embassy in Abuja that can provide military, law enforcement and information-sharing assistance in support of Nigeria's efforts to find and free the girls. She said the U.S. ambassador to Nigeria met Wednesday morning with Nigeria's national security adviser.

"Our legal attache has been in touch with Nigerian police," she said. "The FBI stands ready to send additional personnel, to provide technical and investigatory assistance, including expertise on hostage negotiations, and [the U.S. Agency for International Development] is working with partners on what we can do to be ready to provide victims' assistance."

Information for this article was contributed by Michelle Faul, Lolita C. Baldor and Deb Riechmann of The Associated Press and by Robyn Dixon of the Los Angeles Times.

A Section on 05/08/2014