Kidnappers kill 2 vigilantes, injure 3 in Abuja suburb

Two vigilantes whose names were yet to be ascertained have been killed by kidnappers at Sukuku village in Kwali Area Council of Abuja.

The youth leader of Sukuku, Bello Danjagaba, who confirmed the incident to our reporter on Sunday, said it happened around 9:23am om Thursday when vigilantes from various neighbouring villages mobilised to engage the kidnappers in order to rescue some kidnapped victims being held captive in a forest at Sukuku village.

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According to him, the vigilantes who were led by one of their members from Sukuku, went into the forest on Wednesday evening in search of the kidnappers’ den till Thursday morning when, he said, the vigilante encountered the kidnappers in a shootout.

“And despite the exchange of gunfire with the kidnappers, bullets did not penetrate any of them. They used a piece of wood to hit one of the vigilantes on the head killing him instantly, while one of the kidnappers hiding in a tree shot and killed the second vigilante member,” he said.

He said despite the vigilantes running out of bullets, there was also casualty on the side of the kidnappers, saying corpses of some of the kidnappers that were killed were still in the forest.

“The kidnappers who tried to evacuate the corpses of their members to another hideout were killed at a forest in Lanto village of Kuje Area Council,” he also said.

The youth leader, said the late vigilantes, who are natives not Gbabota and Piri villages, were later evacuated and buried, adding that three others that sustained gunshot wounds were receiving treatment at an undisclosed hospital in Gwagwalada.

Danjagaba, who decried activities of kidnappers, said the criminals have taken over the forest in Sukuku as their base from where they collected ransom from the families of their victims.

A resident of Sukuku village, simply identified as Abednego, said some of the vigilantes rode motorcycles while others came inside pickup vans to the village before moving towards the bandits’ den.

The spokeswoman of the FCT Police Command, DSP Adeh Josephine, did not reply to a text message sent to her phone over the incident as at the time of filing this report.