Four residents of northwest Nigeria told AFP on Saturday that gunmen, known locally as “bandits”, killed at least 140 people in several attacks this week, a fact that has not yet been confirmed by the authorities.
Central and northwestern Nigeria have been home to criminal gangs for years, attacking villages, murdering or kidnapping for ransom.
“We buried a total of 143 people murdered by the bandits in these attacks,” said one of the four sources, Balarabe Alhaji, a community leader from one of the affected towns in Zamfara state.
Hundreds of gunmen on motorbikes stormed nearly 10 towns in Anka and Bukkuyum districts between Wednesday and Thursday, shooting residents, looting and burning houses, according to locals.
Government officials have yet to comment on these attacks.
Babandi Hamidu, a resident of the city of Kurfa Danya confirmed the attacks and explained that “more than 140 people were buried in the ten cities” and that they continue “looking for bodies, because there are many people missing”.
Idi Musa, a resident of another city, Kurfa Danya, said that “the death toll is huge”. “There are about 150 people murdered by the bandits.”
According to Musa, the bandits “stole about 2,000 head of cattle”.
Another resident, who provided only his first name, Babangida, mentioned a similar balance.
All sources reported attending funerals in their respective villages.
In official bulletins, the government describes attacks carried out by groups of armed men as ‘terrorist acts’.
“We classify them as terrorists … and we will treat them as such,” Nigerian President Muhammudu Buhari said in a television announcement this week.
For more than a decade, the former veteran general has also faced a jihadist insurgency in the northeast of the country.
Last year, the “thugs” made international headlines with a series of kidnappings of hundreds of students from their schools or colleges.
Many were later released, but some remain in the hands of their captors.
Police and military operations are multiplying in the northwest of this populous African oil nation.
The Nigerian military this week reported killing 537 “armed bandits and other criminal elements” and prosecuting 374 arrests since May last year, in addition to the release of 452 “kidnapped civilians”.
The group led by one of the most notorious “bandits”, Bello Turji, suffered heavy casualties last month in airstrikes against its bases in jungle areas.
According to analyst Kabir Adamu of Beacon Consulting Nigeria, the killings reported by residents may be a response to these police and military operations.
“Many [bandidos] who, furious at the casualties suffered, decided to move to other areas, could have carried out these attacks during their travels,” Adamu told AFP.
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