Gunmen kill 15 in northern Nigeria: govt

The gunmen raided Rafin Sarki village in Giwa district “with 11 locals confirmed killed” — 10 men and a woman, he added. Cibiya and Karamai villages in Kajuru district were also attacked, leaving two people dead and “several persons were left injured”. Aruwan said two more people were killed in Damari village in Birnin Gwari district. “The Government is engaging the security forces on these developments and other fronts,” he said.

Kaduna is one of the states worst hit by bandits in northern Nigeria. The conflict is compounded by sometimes deadly clashes between nomadic cattle herders and local farmers over grazing and water rights, which have assumed ethnic and religious dimensions.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari is under intense pressure to end the violence before he leaves office next year at the end of his eight-year tenure. There have been growing concern over increasing alliances between bandits and jihadists from the northeast waging a 12-year insurgency to establish a caliphate.

Nasiru El-Rufai, the governor of Kaduna state, acknowledged that jihadists from the Ansaru, an Al-Qaeda-affiliated rival group, and the Islamic West Africa Province (ISWAP) were establishing bases in the state, particularly in the Birnin Gwari district. In March, gunmen attacked a train outside of Kaduna, killing 14 passengers and kidnapping dozens more. They did this by detonating dynamite along the rail line and firing on the coaches. The attack was attributed by the government to jihadists who collaborated with bandits.