At least 30 dead in attack on Kasuwan-Daji village in Nigeria

Gunmen violently stormed a village in Nigeria’s Niger state, killing at least 30 people and looting shops, state authorities said.

The attackers emerged from a forest near the village of Kasuwan-Daji on Saturday and set fire to the local market, looted shops and kidnapped an unknown number of people, police said.

“The gunmen entered the town on motorbikes and armed, rounded up the people and then proceeded to massacre them, while others were shot dead,” a local journalist told the BBC Hausa service.

Attacks and kidnappings by armed criminal gangs, known as bandits, have been a problem in Nigeria for years, but reports in the western and central regions have recently increased.

Abdullahi Rofia, head of the Niger State Emergency Management Agency, confirmed the journalist’s reports that villagers had been rounded up and killed.

He told the BBC that people in the community were terrified: “They are hiding, they are too scared to talk to anyone.

“They’re afraid that if you speak out, they’ll turn around and do the same thing to you.”

Niger State police spokesperson Wasiu Abiodun said an emergency team had been deployed to help the injured and security forces were working to rescue the kidnapped people.

It is illegal to pay ransoms to criminal groups, which the government has classified as terrorists, but some claim this is often ignored.

A witness to the attack told BBC Hausa that there were no security forces in the village.

“We want the government to help us. In the past, we used to hear about this problem elsewhere, but now it is happening in our villages,” he said.

Fear drives people to leave the homes where they were born and raised.

“We are dying like chickens, and does the government care about us?

“The government hears and sees what is happening, but it does nothing. What can we do as ordinary people?”