At least 200 people are believed to have been killed in villages in the northwestern Nigerian state of Zamfara during deadly retaliatory attacks by armed bandits.
Residents returned to the villages on Saturday after the army organized mass funerals. The state government said 58 people were killed in the attacks.
Resident Umraru Makeri, who lost his wife and three children during the attack, said about 154 people, including several watchdogs, were buried. Residents said the total death toll was at least 200.
Balarabe Alhaji, community leader in one of the affected villages, said: “We buried a total of 143 people killed by the bandits in the attacks.”
Bababandi Hamidu, a resident of Kurfa Danya village, said the terrorists were “shooting anyone on sight”.
“More than 140 people were buried in 10 villages and the search is on for more bodies as many have not been traced,” Hamidu said.
news came on Friday Over 100 people killed by suspected “bandit” militants in the north of the country. Between Tuesday and Thursday night, gunmen on motorcycles arrived in large numbers in nine communities, opened fire on residents and set houses on fire.
The army said it carried out airstrikes on targets in the Gusami forest and West Tsmare village of Zamfara state in the early hours of Monday, killing more than 100 militants, including two of their leaders.
Kabir Adamu, a security analyst at Abuja-based Beacon Consulting Nigeria, told AFP this week’s raids could be in response to military operations.
“Annoyed by this, and perhaps at the fact that they were facing certain death, [they] Decided to move to other places and during this time they seem to be carrying out these attacks,” Adamu said.
A series of attacks have occurred in north-west Nigeria, which has seen a sharp rise in mass kidnappings and other violent crimes since late 2020 as the government struggles to maintain law and order.
In a separate incident, 30 students kidnapped from their college in the northwestern Nigerian state of KB were freed on Saturday, a spokesman for the KB governor said without providing details.
The president, Muhammadu Buhari, said in a statement on Saturday that the military had acquired more tools to track and eliminate criminal gangs that are subjecting people to regimes of terror, including communities under siege. Illegal imposition of taxes on
“The latest attacks on innocent people by bandits are an act of desperation by mass murderers, now under pressure from our military forces,” Buhari said.
On Wednesday, the Nigerian government officially labeled the bandits as terrorists, in a move to impose tough sanctions against convicted gunmen, their informers and supporters.
Buhari told Nigerian TV this week: “We labeled them terrorists … we’re going to deal with them like this.”
With Reuters and the agency France-Presse