Armed men burned homes and shops in Woro, a remote village in Kwara State bordering Niger State, authorities say.
Gunmen have killed dozens of people and burned homes and shops in Woro, a remote village in Nigeria’s north-central Kwara State, officials have said, in the deadliest assault recorded this year in the district bordering Niger state.
A Red Cross official told the news agency AFP that the toll has gone up to 162, while a state lawmaker told the Reuters news agency that at least 170 people have been killed in the attack in a region that has increasingly been targeted by gunmen who raid villages, kidnap residents and loot livestock.
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“Reports said that the death toll now stands at 162, as the search for more bodies continues,” Babaomo Ayodeji, Kwara State secretary of the Red Cross, said on Wednesday.
The attack was confirmed by police, who did not provide casualty figures, and the state government. The regional government blamed “terrorist cells” for the attack.
Kwara police spokesperson Adetoun Ejire-Adeyem said the police and military have been mobilised to the area for a search-and-rescue operation, but declined to provide casualty details.
Earlier, a local lawmaker in the Kaiama region, Sa’idu Baba Ahmed, told AFP that between “35 to 40 dead bodies were counted” from the attack on Tuesday evening.
“Many others escaped into the bush with gunshots,” Ahmed said, adding that more bodies could be found.
The gunmen invaded Woro village at around 6:00pm local time (17:00 GMT) on Tuesday and set “shops and the king’s palace ablaze,” said Ahmed, adding that the traditional king’s whereabouts remained unknown.
The king was named by the Red Cross official as Alhaji Salihu Umar.
Villagers fled into the surrounding bushland as the armed men attacked Woro, Ahmed told Reuters by phone. Several people were still missing, he said.
‘A cowardly expression of frustration’
Kwara State governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq condemned the attack as “a cowardly expression of frustration by terrorist cells following the ongoing counterterrorism campaigns in parts of the state”.
Banditry and armed attacks on rural communities have surged across northwest and north-central Nigeria in recent years.
The Nigerian military has intensified operations against armed groups, which are active in the country’s northeast and northwest, and armed bandits. The army regularly claims to have killed huge numbers of fighters.
Last month, the military said it had launched “sustained coordinated offensive operations against terrorist elements” in Kwara State and achieved notable successes.
Local media reported that the army had “neutralised” 150 bandits, a term used to mean killed.
“They successfully neutralised … terrorists, while others managed to escape into the forest,” the army said in a statement on January 30, adding it had cleared their hideouts.
“Troops also stormed remote camps hitherto inaccessible to security forces where several abandoned camps and logistics enablers were destroyed, significantly degrading the terrorists’ sustainment capability,” it added.
In response to the myriad security woes, authorities in Kwara State imposed curfews in certain areas and closed schools for several weeks before ordering them to reopen on Monday.
Insecurity in Africa’s most populous country has been under intense scrutiny in recent months since US President Donald Trump alleged a “genocide” of Christians in Nigeria.
The claim has been rejected by the government and many independent experts, who say Nigeria’s security crises claim the lives of both Christians and Muslims, often without distinction.