Heavily armed gunmen launched a devastating raid on remote farming settlements in Nigeria’s northwestern Katsina State on Sunday, killing at least 10 people, including a pregnant woman and children, before looting livestock and burning homes to the ground.
According to local eyewitnesses, the assault caught residents completely off guard in the Guga community, located within the Bakori Local Government Area. The attackers targeted the twin farming settlements of Gidan Sarkin Noma and Gidan Wawu at approximately 4:00 p.m. local time, taking advantage of a highly vulnerable window when many villagers had left to visit a nearby market ahead of upcoming Eid al-Kabir celebrations, News.Az reports, citing Reuters.
"Heavily armed bandits with sophisticated weapons attacked the farming settlements," Sale Musa, a resident who managed to flee the violence, told Reuters on Monday, May 18. "After opening fire, they captured 10 people, including a pregnant woman, and killed all of them."
Other survivors reported that the gang systematically pillaged the area, destroying personal property and stealing cattle. While the region has endured a volatile cycle of violence over the past year, devastated locals described Sunday's targeted assault as the most severe escalation they have faced in months.
The state's police command has not yet issued an official statement regarding the casualties or ongoing pursuit operations. Northwest Nigeria remains plagued by rampant banditry, where decentralized criminal networks frequently exploit the thin deployment of state security forces to terrorize agricultural hubs, extort communities, and conduct mass kidnappings for ransom.
The security crisis in the northwest coincides with intensifying military action on another front. Across the country in the northeast, the U.S. military confirmed Monday that it had executed a fresh round of coordinated airstrikes targeting Islamic State remnants, highlighting the complex, multi-front security challenge currently testing Nigerian defense forces.
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