Death toll in Zamfara bandits’ attacks rises to 200, victims already buried

Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Hajia Sadiya Umar Farouq has disclosed that over 200 people have already been buried following two days of violent attacks by bandits on several communities in Zamfara State.

This is also the minister confirmed that more than 10,000 people had been left homeless and many were still missing.

At least 200 people have now been confirmed killed in Zamfara state after a wave of vicious attacks by gangs of gunmen over several days as bandits mounted on motorcycles stormed village after village, shooting indiscriminately.

The attacks are believed to be in response to military air strikes on Monday that forced some of the criminal gangs from their forest hideouts.

The groups have plagued Zamfara and neighbouring states for several years.

On Friday it was initially reported that more than 100 people had been killed by the suspected bandits in the region, after some 300 of them on motorbikes arrived in as many as nine communities between Tuesday and Thursday night.

The gunmen burnt homes and mutilated the bodies of their victims in the assault.

Villager Idi Musa said the attackers also rustled around 2,000 cattle.

Reports claim that the armed groups behind the attacks appeared to be on the move – heading towards the western part of Zamfara state after abandoning hideouts in forested areas in response to sustained government attacks.

President Muhammadu Buhari has promised that the government will not relent in its battle with the “outlaws”.

“The latest attacks on innocent people by the bandits is an act of desperation by mass murderers, now under relentless pressure from our military forces,” he said in a statement on Saturday night.

Nigeria’s armed forces said this week that they had killed 537 “armed bandits and other criminal elements” in the region and arrested 374 others since May last year.

Thousands of Nigerian troops have been deployed to fight them.

Meanwhile, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Monday, in Abuja assured Nigerians that the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration is working to crush banditry and insurgency in the country.

National Secretary, APC Caretaker and Extra-ordinary Convention Planning Committee (CECPC), Sen. John Akpanudoedehe, gave the assurance in a statement while reacting to the recent killings in Zamfara by bandits.

The APC scribe, while condemning the development, said the party was deeply pained by the killings of innocent Nigerians in their villages in Zamfara by criminal gangs also known as bandits.

He, however, noted that despite the development, the Buhari government had been steadfast in retooling the Armed Forces.

“The government has been steadfast in retooling the Armed Forces, recruitment of personnel and intensified training to enhance their operational capacity in safe guarding public safety and the territorial integrity of the country.

“We assure Nigerians that banditry and insurgency will be crushed.

“Indeed, the recent designation of these satanic, evil and criminal elements as terrorist groups will further buoy our security services to deal with them as such and ultimately contain their nefarious activities in the country,” he said.

Akpanudoedehe condoled with the families that lost loved ones and commiserated with the government and people of Zamfara, adding that the killings in the state and elsewhere in the country would not go unpunished.

He commended the military and other security services whose concerted onslaught on the camps of the criminals was ensuring the rescue of kidnapped citizens and neutralising the criminal elements.

He said already, the terrorists, formerly bandits, were now fleeing as troop’s clearance operations had forced their dislodgement from their enclaves.

He urged Nigerians to watch out and report any suspicious movement within their environment to appropriate authorities.