At least 10 people have been killed by gunmen in separate attacks in Kaduna State’s Birnin Gwari Local Government Area.
During the operation, which lasted several hours, the gunmen kidnapped an unspecified number of people from the communities, mostly women.
Although the state and police authorities have yet to comment on the incident, a local security source told the media that the bandits had earlier attacked some villages in neighboring Niger State, kidnapping some people, and that while returning to their camp through Birnin Gwari, they were attacked by some local vigilantes at Ungwan Bula, Unguwar Dafillo, and Ijinga villages in the Randagi district of Birnin-Gwari.
The gunmen allegedly returned to the villages on Saturday morning and killed 10 people, including six local vigilante members and four villagers, in retaliation. During the operation, they also kidnapped an unknown number of people.
Similarly, at around 10 a.m. on Saturday morning, gunmen blocked the Kaduna- Birnin-Gwari Road and attacked motorists. According to Ibrahim Nagwari, Chairman of Birnin-Gwari Vanguards for Security and Good Governance, Ibrahim Nagwari, a final year student of Science Secondary School, Birnin-Gwari, who was on his way to Kaduna for the JAMB-UMTE registration, and three other passengers, escaped with bullet wounds when armed bandits sprayed bullets on their vehicle at Manini village along the Birnin-Gwari Kaduna Highway.
The student is scheduled for surgery to remove the bullet from his shoulder at Jibrin Maigwari General Hospital in Birnin-Gwari, according to Nagwari. Residents praised the local government for paying the hospital bills of those injured in the attacks, but demanded that the government establish a special JAMB examination center in Birnin-Gwari as soon as possible to reduce the risk of students traveling far down to Kaduna for registration.