June 12 (EUROPA PRESS) –
Around 25 people were killed and several were kidnapped in attacks on Friday against several towns in the western Nigerian state of Niger, authorities have confirmed, detailing that the assailants broke into five villages in the area.
A community leader from the local area of Rafi has stressed that armed groups have intensified their attacks in the area over the past two weeks, with no claim of responsibility for the moment, as reported by the Nigerian newspaper ‘The Premium Times’.
The spokesman for the Niger State Police, Wasiu Abioudun, stressed that the security forces have been deployed in the area to deal with insecurity after the attacks, carried out one day after the death of thirteen militia groups. of self-defense in this same area.
Armed attacks in Nigeria, previously focused on the northeastern part of the country — where Boko Haram and the Islamic State in West Africa (ISWA) operate — have expanded in recent months to other parts of the north and northwest, blowing up the alarms for the possible expansion of these terrorist networks.
The state of Niger has registered dozens of attacks by criminal gangs that the authorities refer to as “bandits”, responsible for numerous kidnappings for ransom and assaults against civilians and members of the security forces.
