Gunmen from gangs of cattle thieves on Sunday killed 16 people in an attack on a remote village, police in northwest Nigeria said, in the latest raid by the militants in the region.
Northwest and central Nigeria are a hub of criminal gangs of cattle thieves and those kidnapping for ransom who raid villages, killing and abducting residents after looting and burning homes.
The criminals who are known as “bandits” and who maintain camps in a vast forest, straddling Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna and Niger states, have intensified mass abductions of students from schools for ransom.
Dozens of bandits on motorcycles invaded Ganar-Kiyawa village, shooting dead 16 residents, Zamfara State Police Command spokesman Mohammed Shehu said.
“The terrorists killed 16 people in the attack and fled before the deployment of police personnel,” Shehu said on Monday.
“The police and the military are in the area to forestall further attacks and pursue the bandits,” he added.
A statement from the Zamfara state governor’s office confirmed the attack, saying that “many lives were reportedly lost and many others got injured,” without giving details.
However, media reports put the death toll as high as 37, including the village chief, with dozens kidnapped from the village that has been repeatedly targeted by gangs.
The gangs, which have officially been declared terrorists, continue to attack villages and abduct travelers at bogus checkpoints on highways, despite the deployment of troops and government amnesty.
On Sunday, Zamfara State Information Commissioner Ibrahim Dosara said that bandit attacks in the state have displaced more than 700,000 people, prompting the state government to open eight camps to accommodate them.
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
At first, Francis Ari Sture thought a human was trying to shove him down the steep Norwegian mountainside. Then he saw the golden eagle land. “We are staring at each other for, maybe, a whole minute,” Sture said on Monday. “I’m trying to think what’s in its mind.” The bird then attacked Sture five more times on Thursday last week, scratching and clawing the 31-year-old bicycle courier’s face and arms over 10 to 15 minutes as he sprinted down the mountain. The same eagle is believed to be responsible for attacks on three other people across a vast mountainous area of southern Norway
RSS