Gunmen kill at least 67 in new Nigeria attack

Gunmen have killed at least 67 people in Kwara state in west-central Nigeria, a Red Cross official said Wednesday, after the military recently carried out operations in the area against what it called “terrorist elements”.

Parts of Nigeria are plagued by armed gangs — locally known as bandits who loot villages and kidnap for ransom — as well as intercommunal violence in the central states and jihadist groups that are active in the northeast and northwest.

“We just recorded 67 persons killed and some people’s whereabouts are still unknown,” Babaomo Ayodeji, Kwara state secretary of the Red Cross, told AFP.

Earlier, a local lawmaker in the Kaiama region, Sa’idu Baba Ahmed, told AFP that between “35 to 40 dead bodies were counted” from the Tuesday evening incident.

The attack was confirmed by police, who did not provide casualty figures, and the state government, which blamed it on “terrorist cells”.

“Many others escaped into the bush with gunshots,” Ahmed said, adding that more bodies could be found.

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The gunmen invaded Woro village around 6:00 pm (1700 GMT) on Tuesday and set “shops and the king’s palace ablaze”, said Ahmed.

He added that the traditional king’s whereabouts was unknown.

Kwara state governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq condemned the attack as “a cowardly expression of frustration by terrorist cells following the ongoing counterterrorism campaigns in parts of the state”.

The Nigerian military has intensified operations against jihadists and armed bandits, with the army making regular claims of killing huge numbers of fighters.

Last month, the military said it had launched “sustained coordinated offensive operations against terrorist elements” in Kwara state and achieved notable successes.

Local media reported that the army had “neutralised” 150 bandits, a term used to mean killed.

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“They successfully neutralised… terrorists, while others managed to escape into the forest,” the army said in a statement on January 30, adding it had cleared their hideouts.

“Troops also stormed remote camps hitherto inaccessible to security forces where several abandoned camps and logistics enablers were destroyed significantly degrading the terrorists’ sustainment capability,” it added.

In response to the myriad insecurity woes, local authorities in Kwara state imposed curfews in certain areas and had closed schools for several weeks, before ordering them to reopen on Monday.

Insecurity in Africa’s most populous country has been under intense scrutiny in recent months since US President Donald Trump alleged a “genocide” of Christians in Nigeria.

The claim has been rejected by the Nigerian government and many independent experts, who say the country’s security crises claim the lives of both Christians and Muslims, often without distinction.