KANO, Nigeria: Gunmen on motorbikes killed 43 people in waves of attacks in northern Nigeria, police said yesterday, the latest violence by criminal gangs raiding villages and stealing livestock.
The series of attacks, carried out overnight Saturday to Sunday in Nigeria’s far northwestern Sokoto state, saw the gangs ride out from forest hideouts, speeding into villages and beginning to shoot.
“They opened fire on the village indiscriminately,” said Abdullahi Dantani, from the village of Satiru, where 18 people were murdered.
In Sokoto state’s Rabah district, gunmen rode into four villages massacring 25 people.
“Twenty-five people were killed,” said Ibrahim Kaoje, Sokoto state’s top police officer.
Four people were arrested in connection to those attacks, Kaoje said, “including a female informant of the gangs, who disguised as a mad woman.” – AFP