BAUCHI, Nigeria, April 8 (Reuters) – Gunmen kidnapped at least 80 people, mostly women and children, in Nigeria’s Zamfara state, an area where armed gangs kidnap remote villages for ransom, residents said. Saturday.
Gangs of armed men have attacked hundreds of local communities across northwestern Nigeria in recent years, while Islamist militants continue to carry out attacks in the northeast.
The latest kidnapping took place on Friday in the village of Wanzamai in the Tsafe local government area of Zamfara, three residents said. Zamfara is one of the states most affected by kidnappings.
Musa Usman, whose 14-year-old son Ibrahim was one of those abducted, said village women and children were clearing land for cultivation and collecting firewood when they were abducted by armed men and driven into a nearby forest.
“Children from different households went to collect firewood and some of them were on their way to farms looking for manual labor when they were kidnapped,” Usman told Reuters by telephone.
Zamfara police spokesman Mohammed Shehu confirmed the incident in a statement, but did not say how many people had been abducted. Police were working with the military and community security guards to rescue the victims, he said.
Haruna Noma, another of the parents, said some of the abductees came from two nearby villages, Kucheri and Danwuri, and had gone to Wanzamai to clear land for cultivation.
The gunmen had not yet demanded ransom, according to residents.
Amina Tsafe said that her daughter had also been abducted and that most of the abducted children were between the ages of 12 and 17.
In Nigeria, kidnappers often hold their victims for months if a ransom is not paid and also require villagers to pay protection fees in order to farm and harvest their crops.
The Nigerian army has shelled the camps used by the armed gangs, but the attacks continue. (Additional reporting by Ahmed Kingimi in Maiduguri; Writing by MacDonald Dzirutwe; Editing in Spanish by Ricardo Figueroa)
Source: Ambito
