Bandits attacked five communities of Faru district in Maradun Local Government Area of Zamfara State killing several residents on Thursday morning.
The communities affected include Gudan-Baushi, Gidan-Adamu,Gudan-Maidawa, Tsauni, and Wari.
The spokesperson of the state Police Command, Mohammed Shehu, confirmed the death toll to be 35 persons, however, 42 bodies were recovered after the raid.
According to him, his men failed to reach the affected communities on time when they were informed of the invasion due to the poor road network.
Mr. Shehu also maintained that the “police are currently working tirelessly” to bring the assailants to justice.
However, a source from the area, claimed the marauders, stormed the communities around 11 am on Thursday morning on motorcycles leaving over forty dead in a trail of destruction in their wake.
“So far, 42 dead bodies have been recovered by the security and volunteer groups in the area.”
“They were shooting sporadically at people they came across in the five communities. They also attacked farmers who were in their farmlands cultivating their crops,” he said.
The corpses were taken to Faru town where they were buried.
Banditry and kidnap have become commonplace in Zamfara with the abduction of 317 female students from a government school in early February being amongst one of the growing cases of the menace.
Angry youths armed with weapons staged a violent protest along the Gusau – Kaura Namoda Highway decrying the state of insecurity and attacks that the people of the area have suffered at the hands of the bandits.
Addressing a press conference on April 2, the Commissioner of Information, Ibrahim Dosara, revealed that no fewer than 2,619 people were killed in the state between 2011 and 2019.
He added that bandits abducted 1,190 people from various parts of Zamfara in the last eight years, and over 100,000 people were displaced from their ancestral homes as a result of bandits’ activities, while 14,378 livestock were rustled within the period.
Dosara noted that the Zamfara State government has spent the sum of N970 million on payment of ransom to bandits to secure the release of kidnapped victims since 2011.
He lamented that there were more than 100 different camps and over 30,000 bandits operating across Zamfara and beyond, but the state governments would continue with its amnesty programme for bandits as part of measures to secure its people.
