A day after scores of people were abducted in a well-coordinated daytime raid on a department of Iraq’s higher-education ministry, officials there today disagreed over how many people had been kidnapped, and how many were still being held, the Reuters news agency reported.

The office of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said that no more than five out of about 40 hostages were still being held, but the minister for higher education and scientific research asserted that up to 80 out of 150 people were still in the hands of their captors. The minister, Abed Dhiyab al-Ajili, said he would resign until the remaining hostages were freed.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister al-Maliki told professors and students at Baghdad University that the government would “do all it takes to keep education going.”