At least 35 people have been killed by cattle thieves in five villages in Zamfara state in northwest Nigeria, the country's police said on Saturday.
Testimonies from residents reported 43 dead in the attacks carried out Thursday by looters and cattle thieves whom the authorities generally qualify as "
bandits
".
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Coming on motorcycles, the "
bandits
" carried out coordinated attacks on the villages of Gidan Adamu, Tsauni, Gidan Baushi, Gidan Maidawa and Wari in the district of Maradun, killing the villagers and burning their houses.
"
The attackers managed to leave the villages before the arrival of the security forces, who were delayed due to the poor quality of the roads,
" "explained Mohamed Shehu.
"
We found 43 corpses in the villages and seven injured people
," Danladi Sabo, a resident of one of the villages attacked, told AFP.
The dead were buried on Friday and the injured taken to hospital in Gusau, the provincial capital.
Northwest and central Nigeria are regularly terrorized by gangs of looters and cattle thieves who attack isolated villages.
In recent months, these armed bands have also turned to another very lucrative activity: the mass kidnappings of schoolchildren and high school students.
On Monday, more than 100 children were abducted from a school in neighboring Kaduna state.
All the military operations carried out against them or the amnesty offers proposed by the authorities have so far failed to put an end to this mass crime which strikes entire regions of the Nigerian giant.