Unidentified gunmen killed more than 200 people after invading several towns in northwestern Nigeria’s Zamfara state this week, civil society leaders reported.
“So far we have buried about 200 people (…). We continue to search for more bodies, which are spread over several areas, so we have sent tracking groups to all affected localities,” said Shawwal Aliyu, coordinator of Zamfara Cirle, a civil society organization, according to local media.
“We are waiting for the volunteers to finish their meetings to confirm the number (of deaths)”Aliyu added.
According to volunteers, the assailants – commonly known in Nigeria as “bandits” – began their attacks last Tuesday and lasted until Thursday.
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The bandits mutilated many of the corpses and burned dozens of houses in at least nine towns, causing the displacement of some 10,000 people.
The Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari, condemned the killings “against innocent people” and described them as “an act of desperation on the part of the murderers, now under relentless pressure from our military forces.”
“Criminals will be history because we are not going to withdraw our military operations”Buhari added in a statement issued late Saturday.
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The governor of the state of Zamfara, Bello Matawalle, traveled to the places where the incidents occurred and the presence of the security forces has been reinforced.
According to Matawalle, state authorities are meeting with Nigerian security forces to redesign their military operations in the area, and next Monday they will announce all the decisions taken.
Several states in central and northwestern Nigeria suffer incessant deadly attacks by bandits and a wave of mass kidnappings with the aim of obtaining lucrative ransoms.
These attacks have continued despite repeated promises by the Nigerian President to end this problem and the deployment of more security forces in the area.
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Added to this insecurity in northwest Nigeria is that produced since 2019 in the northeast by the jihadist group Boko Haram and its splinter group, the Islamic State in the Province of West Africa (ISWAP, for its acronym in English).
Both radical groups have murdered more than 35,000 people and caused some 2.7 million internally displaced persons, mostly in Nigeria, but also in neighboring countries such as Cameroon, Chad and Niger.
EFE
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