At minimum 25 people have been killed and many others abducted by gunmen in Nigeria’s northwestern Katsina state, authorities say.

Dozens of gunmen on motorbikes stormed Yargoje in Kankara late on Sunday, the state commissioner for safety affairs, Nasiru Babangida Mu’azu, explained to BBC Hausa.

Assaults by armed gangs – referred to locally as bandits – in north-west and central Nigeria have become virtually plan, with authorities seemingly powerless to end them, even with promises by the federal government and security forces that they are doing the job to conclude the widespread insecurity.

Residents instructed the BBC that dozens of gunmen on motorbikes rode into the community, shooting indiscriminately and looting shops ahead of abducting an unspecified number of villagers.

“The men and women killed by bandits are extra than 50, mainly because some lifeless bodies are nonetheless getting recovered from the bush,” mentioned a resident, who did not want to be named.

“They killed kids, women and adult males, and kidnapped a enormous total of people today. They hurt much more than 30 residents who are at the moment acquiring treatment method at the general healthcare facility.”

Yet another resident, Abdullahi Yunusa Kankara, explained to Reuters that he narrowly escaped the onslaught, which he mentioned ongoing into the early hours of Monday.

“Our city has turned into a dying zone. Virtually each and every property in the village has fallen target to this attack. Far more useless bodies had been recovered this [Monday] early morning,” he mentioned.

Surviving citizens are trying to verify how numerous folks have been abducted.

In December 2020, extra than 300 pupils were being kidnapped from a boys’ secondary boarding college on the outskirts of Kankara by a gang of gunmen on motorcycles. They have been later freed, a 7 days following the Katsina point out authorities verified they had been in talks with the kidnappers.

In March this calendar year, dozens of travellers were being kidnapped in a wide daylight attack also in the exact same area of Katsina, the state in which previous Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari hails from.