Gunmen kill 140 in Nigeria

At least 140 people were killed this week in the Northwest and Nigeria by gangs called “serial killers” by President Muhammadu Buhari.

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The complaints about the massacres, perpetrated by groups known as “bandits” in the region, were reported by four locals.

“We have buried 143 people killed by bandits,” said one of the four sources, Balarabe Alhaji, a community leader from one of the towns where the massacres took place, in the state of Zamfara.

Hundreds of armed men, riding motorcycles, stormed a dozen towns in Anka and Bukkuyum districts between Wednesday and Thursday, shooting at residents and looting and setting fire to houses, residents said.

Government officials have yet to comment on these allegations.

Babandi Hamidu, a resident of the town of Kurfa Danya, confirmed the attacks and explained that “more than 140 people have been buried in the ten villages and bodies are still being searched, as there are many missing people.”

“The death toll is enormous.” “There are about 150 people killed by bandits,” said Idi Musa, a resident of Kurfa Dany, another town in the area.

According to Musa, the bandits “stole some 2,000 head of cattle.”

Another resident, who only identified himself by his first name, Babangida, alluded to a similar balance.

All sources reported having attended funerals in their respective villages.

The police and the armed forces have so far refrained from commenting on these allegations.

But President Buhari claimed on Saturday that “the latest attacks by bandits against innocent people are an act of desperation by serial killers.”

“I assure you that the government will not abandon these harassed communities to their fate, because we are more determined than ever to get rid of those outside the law,” he added.

The government on Wednesday characterized the attacks that are often perpetrated by “bandits” as “terrorist acts” and announced a reinforcement of the law against their perpetrators, as well as against their informants and supporters.

“We classify them as terrorists … and we will treat them as such,” Buhari said in a television announcement this week.

The 79-year-old veteran ex-general has also faced a jihadist insurrection in the northeast of the country for more than a decade.

– Acts of revenge? –

Last year, the “bandits” made international headlines with a series of kidnappings of hundreds of students from their schools or colleges.

Many were later released, but some remain in the hands of their captors.

Police and military operations are multiplying in the northwest of the populous African oil nation.

The Nigerian armed forces reported this week killing 537 “armed bandits and other criminal elements” and making 374 arrests since May last year, and releasing 452 “kidnapped civilians.”

The group led by one of the most notorious “bandits”, Bello Turji, suffered heavy casualties last month in aerial ground attacks against its bases in jungle areas.

According to analyst Kabir Adamu of Beacon Consulting Nigeria, the killings reported by residents may have been a response to these police and military operations.

“Many [bandidos] that enraged by the casualties they suffered, they decided to move to other areas, they could have carried out these attacks during their journeys, “Adamu told AFP.

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