Bandits kill 9, raze Kaduna village in fresh attack

Suspected bandits killed nine people in Kadai village in Fatika district of Kaduna’s Giwa Local Government Area, hours after they had killed six people including a seven-year-old boy in nearby Kidandan village.

Daily Trust reports that Kidandan and Kadai are about three kilometres apart and both are under Fatika district in Giwa LGA where the activities of bandits suspected to be linked to the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) often lead to high casualties.

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Members of the community told Daily Trust that the bandits struck around 9pm on Saturday and immediately began shooting indiscriminately and set ablaze vehicles, motorcycles and homes.

“After they attacked Kidandan on Friday night, the Military, Air force and the Police arrived and the Air force began air operation while the police and military moved in with about three APC tanks. We heard that security agents were able to disperse the bandits and even killed some of them but they regrouped and launched another attack on nearby Kadai village,” said a youth leader, Hussaini Umar.

Umar said during the attack, the bandits blocked the Gwargwaji-Dogon Dawa road, adding that many villagers are still unaccounted for while hundreds have fled to nearby Galadimawa town and Zaria city for refuge.

Findings by our correspondent revealed that the latest wave of attacks followed the arrest and handover to security agents of some suspected bandits by the vigilante groups in the axis.

Sources within Fatika district and Galadimawa town told our correspondent that one of the bandits was arrested in full military kit and heavily armed following which the vigilante groups handed him and his accomplices to security agencies.

Kaduna State Police Public Relations Officer, ASP Mohammed Jalige, did not respond to calls to his phone but the Kaduna State government on Sunday condoled with the people of Kadai and Kidandan over the attacks and appealed to security agencies to sustain the ongoing onslaught against bandits and other criminals.

A statement by the state Commissioner of Internal Security and Home Affairs, Samuel Aruwan, stated that an unspecified number of the armed bandits were on Friday neutralised at Kidandan by security operatives working with local vigilante while many escaped with varying degrees of bullet wounds.

It would be recalled that in early March, bandits launched a coordinated attack that claimed 51 people in five villages within the same axis. The Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, who visited Kaduna state to assess the situation at that time, revealed that the bandits had links to ISWAP.