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According to local sources at AFP, the massacre was carried out between Wednesday and Thursday in Zamfara state, in northwestern Nigeria.
Several villagers and a village chief who participated in the funeral testify to Agence France-Presse of the scale of the massacre. At least 200 victims, but the toll might be even heavier, notes our correspondent on the spot, Liza Fabbian.
The armed bandits, they say, stormed by the hundreds on motorcycles into a dozen villages in the districts of Anka and Bukkuyum. Completely overwhelming the self-defense militias, they began to ” shoot on sight On the inhabitants, but also to loot and burn down buildings. They also allegedly took 2,000 head of cattle.
The governor of the state of Zamfara, Bello Matawalle, went there this Saturday, to meet survivors of this tragedy – without communicating an official report.
On Wednesday, federal authorities officially changed the qualification of these bandits to ” terrorists “. One way to be able to toughen the sanctions once morest these criminals who have been raging for years in northwestern Nigeria, but who have also been kidnapping schoolchildren since 2020.
The Nigerian army, which is also confronted with Boko Haram jihadists in the northeast of the country and armed separatists in the southeast, says it has rescued nearly 500 kidnapped civilians, killed more than 500 bandits and arrested some nearly 400 in northwestern Nigeria in a year and a half. A major gang leader has been eliminated and more than a hundred hostages freed in the past week. Increased military repression that may have motivated the killing this week.
In addition, the federal government has just authorized the dispatch on the spot of Super Tucano fighter planes, recently delivered by the United States, in order to intensify its strikes in the region.
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