Gunmen abducted 19 Muslim worshippers after attacking a mosque in the restive northwest of Nigeria, police said Sunday.
The attackers stormed the mosque in Maigamji village, in Katsina state, during evening prayers Saturday and carried out the kidnappings after shooting and wounding the imam and another worshipper, said local police spokesman Gambo Isah.
“Our men mobilized and went after the bandits and succeeded in rescuing six of the worshippers from their abductors, while efforts are underway to free the remaining 13,” he added.
The two people wounded were being treated in the hospital, he added.
Northwest and central Nigeria have been terrorized by criminal gangs locally known as bandits, who village raids steal cattle, kidnap for ransom and burn homes after looting supplies.
Hostages are usually released after a ransom is paid to the gangs, which take refuge in the vast Rugu Forest. It straddles four states in northwest Nigeria, including Katsina.
Last month, 15 people were killed and several others wounded in a series of bandit attacks on villages in neighboring Kaduna state, say the authorities.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has been under intense pressure to end the violence before he leaves office next year at the end of his eight-year tenure in office.
There is growing concern over an alliance in the northeast between the bandits and jihadists waging a 12-year insurgency to establish a Caliphate. (Source: Agence France-Presse)
Senegal Lawmakers exchange blows and hurl a chair in parliament over a perceived insult to influential opposition religious leader. An opposition MP Massata Samb slapped legislator Amy Ndiaye over her remark’s influential opposition religious leader, Serigne Moustapha Sy which was widely circulating on television and social media. Ndiaye on November 27, 2022 had accused him of betraying his word and disrespecting President Macky Sall, according to media reports.
Close observed had disclosed that tension have been growing in Parliament since the Governing Party Lost its comfortable Majority in the July Election. Legislative elections in July led to a virtual tie, requiring Macky Sall’s ruling party to forge a coalition to stay in power. Sall, who has been President of Senegal since April 2012 was initially elected to a seven-year term in 2012 and re-elected for a five-year tenure in 2019. He has not divulged his plans for the next presidential vote, due in 2024.
Senegal has been widely viewed as a beacon of democratic stability in West Africa, a region notorious for democratic instability, coups and dictatorships. However, the current bust-up erupted during a vote on the justice ministry’s budget for 2023. Regrettably, some members of the governing coalition, as well as feminist activists, had described as unacceptable the physical attack on Ndiaye, which coincided with an awareness campaign about violence against women and girls.
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