20 shot dead in Nigerian village

Twenty persons have been shot dead by an armed gang in the Nigerian village of Dogon Dawa in Kaduna state.

The gunmen shot the victims today as they were leaving the mosque in the village after prayers

Reuters quoting Abdullahi Muhammad, the traditional ruler and councillor of Birnin Gwari, a local government area next door to the village.said at least 20 people died.

“It is a clear case of armed robbery” Lieutenant Colonel Sani Usman told a news agency, confirming the shooting outside the mosque in the village of Dogo Dawa. “The last time I spoke with my (contact) in the area, he said it was 20 people dead.”

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. Like much of northern Nigeria, Kaduna is plagued by an insurgency led by radical Islamist sect Boko Haram. They usually attack security forces, government officials or Christians, but have hit Muslim clerics and mosques in the past, especially ones that do not follow their hardline brand of Islam.

Kaduna also lies close to Nigeria’s volatile “Middle Belt”, where Nigeria’s mostly Muslim north and largely Christian south meet, and where tensions over land and ethnicity often erupt into violence.

But Abdulladhi said the attack was most likely carried out by a local criminal gang.

“We are suspecting a reprisal attack by gangs of armed robbers who lost some of their members after a recent exchange of fire with the villagers and the vigilantes,” he said.

“The village had been terrorised by an armed group operating from camps in the forest. These armed men mostly attack villages and motorists along the busy Kaduna to Lagos highway.”

The state police commissioner Olufemi Adenaike confirmed the incident, but said he could not yet confirm the death toll.

Usman however told AFP that the latest attack was linked to a running feud between a group of “bandits” and a vigilante group in Dogon Dawa.

The thieves had tried to rob some residents earlier in the week but were repelled, he said, adding that the robbers returned to the village on Sunday and carried out what he termed a “revenge” attack.

Asked about a potential religious element in the shootings, he said only that “the victims were coming from prayers” at the mosque.

Village resident Dauda Maikudi told AFP that thieves regularly target the area as Dogon Dawa falls along a main road frequently used by traders carrying goods and cash between the north and south of Africa’s most populous country.

“It was a pre-dawn raid,” he said. “The attackers…, some of them dressed in police uniform, came into the village. They killed eight worshippers in the mosque and killed 13 other residents in the village.”

“We believe they were armed robbers because this area has been bedeviled with armed robbers for years,” he added.

Maikudi’s higher death toll and details of the gunmen’s clothing could not be immediately confirmed by the security services.

Dogon Dawa is roughly 70 kilometres (44 miles) from the state capital Kaduna city.

Violent robbery is common on Nigeria’s notoriously dangerous major roadways, with attackers often setting up roadblocks and targetting their victims under the cover of darkness.

The Islamist insurgency in northern Nigeria and weapons flooding in from its neighbours on the threshold of the Sahara have aggravated levels of violence in the region. Armed robberies and local disputes degenerating into deadly shootouts are increasingly common across the impoverished north.

There have been similar attacks by armed gangs against Nigerian villagers in the past, that are not Boko Haram related.

In June in Zamfara state, a gang of armed robbers killed 27 people in the villages of Dan-Gulbi, Guru, Diya and Sabo Kasuwa.

About 80 people on motorbikes carried out the attack, using assorted weapons.

According to reports then, some victims had their throat cut, in a dastardly move said to be a revenge by the gang against the villagers vigilante group for killing a fellow gangster.

Villagers had been preparing for a local market day when the killers struck.