By Oluwatosin Maliki
Gunmen storms and attack residents living in the Nasarawa area in Maru town, the headquarters of Maru Local Government Area of Zamfara State, three people are feared dead.
The attack occurred in the early hours of Friday, the bandits shot sporadically to scare away residents, they reportedly arrived at the Local Government Area in large numbers heavily armed.
However, security authorities in the state are yet to confirm the recent attack.
It was gathered that Yazid Abubakar, the Zamfara Police Command spokesman, did not respond to phone calls when contacted.
Although, an anonymous resident who resides in the town explained that the Troops of Operation Hadarin Daji responded swiftly to a distress call and they engaged the terrorists in a fierce gun battle which lasted for over two hours.
Furthermore, he noted that there is no confirmation as to whether any resident was abducted during the invasion, but said three persons were killed, including an aged man identified as Mallam Isah.
The source stated, “As of now, we don’t know if they kidnapped anybody but I can confirm to you that three persons have been shot dead”.
Beginning of this year, the life of a Divisional Police Officer in the Maru Local Government Area and two other police officers were lost, while combating a similar attack in the local government headquarters.
Over the years, North-Western and central Nigerian states have been constantly terrorised by gangs, known locally as bandits, who raid villages and cause mayhem killing and abducting residents for ransom in rural areas where security presence is absent or weak.
The gangs are notorious for mass kidnappings from schools and colleges in recent years, the perpetrators maintain camps hidden deep in vast forests straddling Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna, and Niger states.
So far, security operatives have also struggled to put an end to the violence in the North-West and several peace deals and amnesties with the bandit militias have no results.