At least two dead and 20 kidnapped after an attack on a hospital in western Nigeria

Oct. 19 (EUROPA PRESS) –

At least two people have died and twenty others have been kidnapped after an attack by a group of armed men on a hospital located in a community in the state of Niger, in western Nigeria.

The assailants broke into the Abdulsalam Abubakar General Hospital in Lapai on Tuesday afternoon, killing two patients and taking about twenty people, including one of the center’s doctors, according to the Nigerian newspaper ‘Leadership’.

The state governor, Alhaji Abubakar Sani Bello, has condemned this “regrettable” and “inhumane” event and has called for “an intense and rapid security operation” to defend access to health in the region, which has been affected , as he has recognised, due to an increase in “armed banditry”.

Bello has announced that the state government is already collaborating with the Joint National Security Command to carry out a coordinated operation against these groups and in turn has promised that they will do everything “humanly possible” to bring back the hostages safe and sound. and those who fled.

The attacks in Nigeria, previously focused on the northeast of the country — where Boko Haram and its offshoot, the Islamic State in West Africa (ISWA) operate — have spread in recent months to other areas of the north and northwest, making sound the alarms due to the possible expansion of these terrorist and criminal networks, many of which live by kidnapping students.