Sunday, August 10, 2025 - Criminal gangs have killed 13 security personnel, including two policemen and 11 vigilantes, in Nigeria’s northwestern Zamfara state in the latest violence in the region, a lawmaker and residents told AFP Sunday.
Criminal gangs called bandits by locals have for years been
terrorising communities in northwest and central Nigeria, raiding villages,
kidnapping residents and burning homes after looting them.
Bandits in large numbers stormed Adabka village in Bukkuyum
district late on Friday and kidnapped some residents, the sources said.
They laid ambush and opened fire on a team of policemen and
vigilantes pursuing them to free the abductees.
“The bandits killed 13 people in the ambush, including 11 vigilantes and two
policemen,” Hamisu Faru, a lawmaker from the area said.
“We are still unable to retrieve the bodies because the
bandits are staying put in the bush,” Faru said.
Aminu Adace, a resident of Adabka who gave the same toll, said many residents
fled the village for fear of renewed attacks.
Adabka and nearby communities have been repeatedly raided by
bandits who maintain camps in nearby forests, forcing residents of several
villages to desert their homes, Faru said.
“These forests harbour more than 5,000 bandits who continue
to terrorise our communities,” Faru said, insisting that aerial bombardment was
the only effective way of smoking out the bandits.
Despite military deployment to fight the criminal gangs
since 2015 and the creation of a militia force by the Zamfara state government
two years ago, the violence has persisted.
Federal and state authorities have over the years signed
several peace deals with the gangs only for the bandits to renege and resume
attacks.
Last month, a group of Muslims clerics brokered a
government-backed truce with a notorious bandit leader in Zamfara’s Shinkafi
district, which some residents doubted would hold.
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