YENAGOA, Nigeria — Gunmen armed with AK-47 rifles have kidnapped greater than 30 folks from a prepare station in Nigeria’s southern Edo state, the governor’s workplace stated on Sunday.
The assault is the most recent instance of the rising insecurity that has unfold to just about each nook of Africa’s most populous nation, posing a problem to the federal government prematurely of a February presidential election.
Police stated in an announcement that armed herdsmen had attacked Tom Ikimi station at 4 p.m. (1500 GMT) as passengers awaited a prepare to Warri, an oil hub in close by Delta state. The station is a few 111 km northeast of state capital Benin City and near the border with Anambra state.
Some folks on the station had been shot within the assault, police stated.
Edo state data commissioner Chris Osa Nehikhare stated the abductors had taken 32 folks, although one had already escaped.
“At the moment, security personnel made up of the military and the police as well as men of the vigilante network and hunters are intensifying search and rescue operations in a reasonable radius to rescue the kidnap victims,” he stated. “We are confident that the other victims will be rescued in the coming hours.”
The Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) had closed the station till additional discover and the federal transportation ministry known as the kidnappings “utterly barbaric”.
The NRC final month reopened a rail service linking the capital Abuja with northern Kaduna state, months after gunmen blew up the tracks, kidnapped dozens of passengers and killed six folks.
The final hostage taken in that March assault was not freed till October.
Insecurity is rampant throughout Nigeria, with Islamist insurgencies within the northeast, banditry within the northwest, separatists within the southeast and farmer-herdsmen clashes within the central states. — Reuters
