A group of about 300 “thugs” on motorcycles attacked a police station near the village of Gatakawa, Kankara district, Katsina district in northwestern Nigeria, killing five police officers, Nigerian police spokesman Jumbo Issa said.

He noted, “We lost five police officers in a shootout with bandits as they tried to stop them from raiding the village of Gatakawa.”

For his part, local official Musa Addo said that at least nine people were killed in separate attacks by members of the same gang on four villages in the neighboring district of Vascari.

The jungles of northwestern and central Nigeria are teeming with criminal gangs, whose members are called “bandits” by the locals for killing or kidnapping people after looting and burning their homes. In recent years, cases of violence perpetrated by “highway bandits” have become more frequent. According to the NGO Acled, these criminal gangs killed more than 2,600 civilians in 2021, more than 250% more than in 2020.