21 Dead In Weekend In Attacks In Northwest Nigeria

Twenty-one people were killed and 13 were wounded in two attacks in northwest Nigeria at the weekend, officials said, in the latest deadly violence in the troubled region

Kano, Nigeria, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Aug, 2021 ) :Twenty-one people were killed and 13 were wounded in two attacks in northwest Nigeria at the weekend, officials said, in the latest deadly violence in the troubled region.

Northwest and central Nigeria are struggling with tit-for-tat violence between nomadic herders and farmers over access to pasture and water, and with raids by criminal gangs who storm villages, stealing cattle and kidnapping for ransom.

On Sunday nine people were killed when "unidentified persons" attacked the village of Ungwan Dooh in Kaduna state's Zangon Kataf district, Samuel Aruwan, the state's security commissioner said.

The village lies in a notorious area for flareups between predominantly Muslim Fulani herders and mainly Christian farmers.

"Nine corpses have been recovered so far following a search of the village," Aruwan said in a statement.

"One resident... sustained gunshot injuries and is receiving treatment in hospital. Two houses were razed in the attack." Soldiers were combing the area for the assailants, he said.

On Saturday, 12 people were killed and 12 injured when several hundred members of a criminal gang, known locally as bandits, stormed Duba village in neighbouring Katsina state on motorbikes, police said.

"The criminals rode into the village, around 300 of them, carrying machine guns and RPGs (rocket propelled grenades) and ransacked the village, where they broke into shops and looted provisions," said Gambo Isah, Katsina state police spokesman.

The gangs, who maintain camps in the vast Rugu forest which straddles Katsina, Kaduna, Zamfara and Niger states, have increasingly been attacking schools where they kidnap students to extort ransom from parents.

Last week bandits seized nine pupils from an Islamic seminary in Katsina's Faskari district, the second such kidnap in as may months.

Recently local media quoted Katsina State Governor Aminu Bello Masari as urging civilians to arm themselves in defence against bandit assaults.

President Muhammadu Buhari has come under fire for Nigeria's worsening security, with troops fighting a 12-year jihadist insurgency in the northeast, herder-farmer tensions and banditry in the northwest and separatist agitations in the southeast.