Attack in Kasuwan-Daji village in Nigeria kills at least 30 people

Armed men violently attacked a village in Nigeria’s Niger state, killing at least 30 people and looting shops, authorities in Nigeria’s Niger state said.

The attackers emerged from the forest near the village of Kasuwan-Daj on Saturday, setting fire to a local market, looting shops and kidnapping an unknown number of people, police said.

“Gunmen on motorcycles came into towns with weapons, rounded up people and then massacred them, while others were shot dead,” a local journalist told BBC Hausa.

Attacks and kidnappings by armed criminal gangs, known as bandits, have been a problem in Nigeria for years, but there has been a recent surge in reports in the west and central regions.

Abdullahi Rofia, an official with Niger’s National Emergency Management Agency, confirmed reporters’ reports that villagers were rounded up and killed.

He told the BBC that people in the community were scared: “They were hiding, they were too afraid to talk to anyone.

“They’re afraid that if you talk, they’re going to turn around and do the same thing to you.”

Niger State police spokesman Wasiu Abiodun said an emergency team had been deployed to help the injured and security forces were working to rescue the abducted people.

Paying ransoms to criminal groups is illegal and the government lists them as terrorists, but some claim this is often ignored.

An eyewitness to the attack told BBC Hausa there were no security forces in the village.

“We want the government to help us. In the past, we used to hear about this problem in other places, but now it is happening in our village,” he said.

Fear is driving people from the homes where they were born and raised.

“We are dying like chickens, does the government care about us?

“The government hears and sees what’s going on but takes no action. What can we, as ordinary people, do?”