One hundred and forty people were killed this week in northwest Nigeria by groups called “serial killers” by the country’s President Muhammadu Buhari.
The complaints about the massacres, committed by groups known in the region as “bandits”, were made by four residents. “We buried 143 people murdered by the bandits,” said one of the four sources, Balarabe Alhaji, a community leader in 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.
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 “the death toll is huge”. “There are about 150 people murdered by the bandits.” According to her, 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.
Neither the police nor the Armed Forces commented on the allegations. The country’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, said today that “the latest attacks committed by bandits against innocent people are an act of desperation by serial killers. I assure you that the government will not abandon these harassed communities to their fate, because we are more determined than ever to get rid of these outlaws.”
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,” Buhari said on TV this week.
For more than a decade, the former veteran general has also faced a jihadist insurgency in the northeast of the country.
– Revenge? –
Last year, the bandits 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 Armed Forces 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 they had suffered, decided to move to other areas, could have carried out these attacks during their travels,” Adamu told AFP.
Central and northwestern Nigeria have been home to criminal gangs for years, attacking villages, murdering or kidnapping for ransom.
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