Gunmen kill 35 in five Zamfara communities, burn many houses

Bandits have attacked five communities in the Maradun Local Government Area of Zamfara State, killing 35 people.
The attackers also invaded the communities in large numbers also reportedly set many houses ablaze.
The latest attack came a few weeks after an unconfirmed number of people were killed in Kadawa village in the state.
The gunmen were said to have invaded the communities — Gudan-Maidawa, Tsauni, Gudan-Baushi, Gidan-Adamu, and Wari — on Thursday evening.
The attackers reportedly arrived the communities on about 100 motorcycles.
Muhammad Shehu,
Spokesperson for the Zamfara State Police Command, Muhammad Shehu, confirmed the incident on Friday.
He said the attackers fled before the police on rescue mission could reach the communities.
“The police personnel tried their best to reach the affected communities on receiving the information that the bandits were there, but unfortunately they could not reach the places because of the bad roads,” Shehu was quoted to have said.
The police spokesperson added that the command had launched a manhunt to arrest the perpetrators of the crime.
The state governor, Bello Matawalle, who defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC) in June, had said the issue of insecurity in the state would be effectively dealt with after joining the ruling party.

The state Commissioner for Information, Ibrahim Dosara, at a frecent press conference revealed that no fewer than 2,619 people were killed by bandits in the state between 2011 and 2019.
He added that bandits abducted 1,190 people from various parts of Zamfara in the last eight years, and over 100,000 people were displaced from their ancestral homes as a result of bandits’ activities, while 14,378 livestock were rustled within the period.

Dosara said the Zamfara State Government had spent the sum of N970 million on ransom to secure the release of kidnapped victims since 2011.
He lamented that there were more than 100 different camps and over 30,000 bandits operating across Zamfara but added that the state governments would continue with its amnesty programme for bandits as part of measures to secure its people.