armed assailants kill 30 people in six villages

Armed assailants killed 30 people on Saturday, June 3, attacking six villages in northwestern Nigeria, plagued by violence from criminal gangs, local police learned Monday, June 5. Arrived aboard a “twenty motorcycles”these gunmen carried out raids killing “eight people in Raka, seven in Bilingawa, six in Jaba, four in Dabagi, three in Raka Dutse and two in Tsalewa”detailed the police spokesperson in a press release.

The motive for the attack is unclear, but in these rural areas of Nigeria, fierce competition over resources between herders and farmers is fueling the escalation of violence. In this area, conflicts have multiplied and these communities have mobilized armed groups to ensure their protection. Some, locally called bandits, have gradually turned into a criminal group and attack, loot villages, kill their inhabitants or kidnap them against the payment of ransoms.

According to the police, the bandits carried out a targeted expedition against these villages after the beating of several herders in a nearby village by a vigilante group. But according to two residents of the district, it is not a question of community tensions, but of an attempted racketeering by an armed group. The attackers “were furious at our refusal to negotiate with them and pay them money for our protection, as other villages have done, that’s why they attacked our villages”explained one of them.