Gunmen on motorbikes killed 43 people in waves of attacks in northern Nigeria, police said Monday, 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.
In Sokoto state’s Rabah district, gunmen rode into four villages — Rukunni, Tsage, Giire and Kalfu — massacring 25 people.
Sokoto state’s top police officer Ibrahim Kaoje, said Four people were arrested in connection to those attacks, including a female informant of the gangs, who disguised as a mad woman.
In a separate wave of attacks in Satiru village, in Sokoto’s Isa district, the raiders shot 18 people, and then stole animals.The gangs have long been a scourge of rural communities in northern Nigeria, raiding villages, stealing cattle, burning homes, looting food, and kidnapping for ransom.
