Armed men stormed the Kpenya mosque in Nigeria’s Niger State during Friday prayers, at about 2 p.m., police spokesperson Wasiu Abiodun said, after first attacking the villages of Gidan-Zana and Kpenya. Worshippers were taken away. How many, and how many were killed, is still unsettled.
“People were abducted while praying at a Juma’at mosque on Friday,” Borgu council chair Abdullahi Mohammed Nasir told the Associated Press. “That was when the bad people came and surrounded the mosque and took them away.”
Local residents told AFP and Reuters that as many as 60 people were kidnapped. Another report put the number above 60. On deaths, the accounts split. Police said a developing report indicated that “no life was lost.” Witnesses told AFP that several people were killed.
One survivor, Jibril Ahmad of Dikera, described what happened. “Soon after finishing the normal Friday prayer, the armed group […] in their hundreds, wielding guns, knives and machetes, began to attack us,” he told AFP. “They slaughtered some of our people, saying we are not practicing the true teachings of Islam.”
Federal lawmaker Jafaru Mohammed said the nearby village of Binzi was hit as well, with numerous people killed and many others marched toward surrounding forests, including areas near Kainji Lake. He said the exact toll was unknown.
Who was behind it
No group has claimed responsibility, and police have not named the attackers. One witness told AFP the gunmen were Lakurawa, a group researchers link to Islamic State Sahel Province. A Dikera resident said it was Ansaru, which split from Boko Haram and is now aligned with al-Qaeda. The conflicting accounts could not be independently verified.
Witnesses added a further detail: a rival jihadist faction, Mahmuda, clashed with the attackers, and the fighting let some residents and abductees escape. Mohammed said Mahmuda members opposed Lakurawa’s ideology and confronted the group once they learned of the attack. Residents said Lakurawa fighters have previously demanded livestock and farm produce from local farmers and herders as so-called taxes.
A second resident, Abdullahi Ahmad, alleged that militants came back Saturday to seize more people, possibly to use as leverage before an expected deployment of Nigerian troops, and that they planted landmines on a road out of Dikera. He said a man and his family died when their vehicle hit one. Those claims could not be verified either.
Background
Nigeria has fought a jihadist insurgency for about 17 years. It started in the northeast, but armed groups, including fighters from the Sahel, have become more active in the west near the border with Benin. Mass abductions are a trademark tactic, from the 2014 kidnapping of schoolgirls in Chibok to the case weeks earlier in which 163 captives, mostly women and children, were freed and handed to authorities in Ilorin. They had been seized on Feb. 3, when militants stormed the village of Woro and killed more than 160 people.
Police and security personnel were sent to the area for assessment and rescue operations. Authorities have yet to establish a final toll.
Sources
- Nigeria: Jihadis kidnap dozens during Friday prayers
- Nigeria: Jihadists Kill and Abduct Dozens During Friday Prayers in Niger State — Terror Monitor
- Jihadists Slaughter and Kidnap Dozens During Friday Prayers in Nigeria for ‘Not Practising True Islam’ – The Daily Sceptic
