Gunmen known in northwest Nigeria as “bandits” killed at least 140 people in multiple raids this week, four residents told AFP on Sunday, but there was no official confirmation.
Clashes between herders and farmers over ac-cess to land has plagued northwest and central Nigeria for years, with some groups evolving into crimi-nal gangs who now terrorise local communities.
“We buried a total of 143 people killed by the bandits in the attacks,” said Balarabe Alhaji, a community leader in one of the affected villages in Zamfara state.
Hundreds of motorcycle-riding gunmen ram-paged through ten villages in Anka and Bukkuyum districts on Wednesday through Thursday, shooting residents and looting and burning homes, locals said.
Officials and security agencies have not yet commented on the attacks. Babandi Hamidu, a resi-dent of Kurfa Danya village said the militants were shooting “anyone on sight”.
“More than 140 people were buried across the ten villages and the search for more bodies is ongo-ing because many people are unaccounted for,” Hamidu said. Idi Musa, a resident of another village, Kurfa Danya, said “the death toll is huge. We are talking of around 150 people killed by the bandits.” The bandits also stole “around 2,000 cattle,” Musa added.
Another resident who only gave his first name Babangida gave a similar account. All four sources said they were present at burials in their respective villages.
On Wednesday, the Nigerian government offi-cially labelled bandits as terrorists, to bring tougher sanctions against convicted gunmen, their infor-mants and supporters.
In the official gazette, the government said ac-tivities of Yan Bindiga and Yan Ta’adda — mean-ing bandits in the local Hausa language — were “acts of terrorism”.
“We labelled them terrorists… we are going to deal with them as such,” President Muhammadu Buhari told Nigerian TV this week.
The 79-year-old former army general is also battling a more than decade long jihadist insurgency in the northeast. Last year, bandits made international headlines with a series of high-profile attacks on schools and colleges where they kidnapped hundreds of pupils.—AFP
