(Lagos) Gunmen abducted more than 30 people in an attack on a train station in southern Nigeria, police and local authorities said on Monday.
Despicable kidnappings are commonplace in Nigeria, particularly in the northwestern and central states of Africa’s most populous country.
In March 2022, armed men blew up a section of the railway line between the capital, Abuja and Kaduna (North), killing eight people and kidnapping dozens of passengers, released over the following months for ransom.
The train station attack in Edo state happened on Saturday night, according to police and local authorities.
The assailants opened fire before abducting passengers waiting for a train to Warri, further south, according to the same sources.
Edo State Information Officer Chris Nehikhare told AFP that 32 people were abducted but one of them managed to escape.
Police and local hunters set off in pursuit of the kidnappers, he added.
“We have cordoned off the area. We know the forests better than they do,” Mr. Nehikhare said.
At the end of February, Nigerians will elect a successor to President Muhammadu Buhari, a former general who is not standing again after two terms and a record deemed catastrophic, his country being in the grip of a serious economic crisis and generalized insecurity.