Gunmen, locally known as bandits in Nigeria, have killed five people, including one Indian, in the Kogi State of the country, said police on Saturday, August 6, with the region tormented by jihadist and gang violence.
The shooters opened fire on a bus near the industrial town of Ajaokuta on Friday evening, August 5, killing one Indian, two police escorts and two drivers, said police spokesman William Ovye Aya in a statement.
Aya stated that one immigrant, two company drivers and two police inspectors lost their lives during the shooting while adding that the foreigner was an Indian employee working in a ceramics company in the town.
Earlier, Aya stated that six people, including two Indians, were killed during the incident.
He explained the gunmen as hoodlums, a word used by the police officers for jihadists and criminals.
They escaped before police reinforcements who arrived on the scene, but police immediately started looking for them, he said.
Security had been increased to restore normalcy in the region.
No group has yet taken responsibility for the attack, but Kogi has witnessed a rise in violence during recent months.
In July 2022, bandits killed three police officers along with five vigilantes during an ambush in the Ajaokuta area of the central state, pushing the state governor to suspend a local chief and question the political administrator of the district.
Before that, in June, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) jihadists, working outside their regular base in the northeast, attacked a police station by bombing it in Kogi’s Okehi district, killing a policeman as well as demolishing the facility.
In April, they attacked a police station in Adavi, killing three police officers.
ISWAP, which separated from Boko Haram in 2016 to be a dominant jihadist group in the country, claimed both the attacks.
ISWAP was also accountable for a last-minute jailbreak in July outside the Nigerian capital Abuja that released hundreds of inmates, including 64 jihadist commanders.
