At least 40 people were killed on Friday afternoon when gunmen riding motorcycles stormed a village in north-eastern Nigeria just after Friday prayers, according to Amnesty International, in one of the deadliest single attacks on a rural community in the region this year.
The attackers struck Binnari, a farming village in the Karim Lamido area of Taraba State, shortly after worshippers had finished Juma’at prayers. Survivors described a column of around 50 motorcycles, two armed men on each, rolling into the village and opening fire as people scattered into the surrounding bush. The rampage lasted for hours, residents said, while the gunmen looted shops, seized cash and food, and rode off on motorcycles abandoned by fleeing villagers. Houses were set alight and food crops destroyed, according to local reports.
“People were running in different directions to escape the attack. Nobody knew where it was safe to go,” Binnari resident Isiyaku Musa told the AFP news agency. Another resident, Sa’idu Nuhu, said: “After the attackers left, we counted more than 20 bodies, and some people were still missing.”
The death toll remains disputed, and that dispute itself has become part of the story. Taraba State police said officers recovered 10 bodies by Friday evening. Survivors who counted the dead put the figure above 20, while the Nigerian newspaper ThisDay reported around 30 feared dead. Amnesty International said on Saturday that at least 40 people had been killed, with more bodies recovered later that day. Children and elderly residents were among the victims, ThisDay reported.
Community leader Malam Abubakar Saifullahi said the raiding party arrived on about 50 motorcycles. “They looted shops and took cash, foodstuffs and other provisions. They also took motorcycles abandoned by people fleeing the attack,” he said. Police spokesman Assistant Superintendent Victor Mshelizah confirmed the attack and said officers had dispersed the gunmen, though the difficult terrain worked in the attackers’ favour. “There was no casualty on their side and ours because the terrain is difficult and they’re used to the terrain,” he said, adding that officers were still searching the bush for further casualties and warning that the toll could rise.
Amnesty International condemned the attack and turned its criticism on the Nigerian authorities. “The Nigerian authorities continue to leave rural communities in some parts of the north at the mercy of gunmen that are repeatedly commit atrocities with impunity,” the rights group said. “Consistent failure of the authorities to bring the suspected perpetrators to justice is clearly emboldening impunity.”
Taraba sits towards the centre of Nigeria, and the attack underlines how the country’s bandit crisis has spread beyond its traditional north-western heartland. Unlike the jihadist insurgency that has ravaged the far north-east for nearly two decades, the gangs known locally as bandits are driven largely by money: they raid villages, abduct residents for ransom, steal livestock, and levy taxes on farmers and miners in areas where the state barely reaches. Northern Nigeria has seen a surge in such attacks, with overstretched police and military units struggling to cover remote, hard-to-reach settlements.
Why this matters beyond Nigeria is the pattern it exposes. When a village can be overrun for hours, its shops emptied and its harvest destroyed, the damage does not end with the funerals: families are displaced, food supplies are gone, and the next planting season is thrown into doubt. The same weekend, Nigeria’s military said it had killed 15 suspected fighters in an air strike in neighbouring Borno State — a reminder that Africa’s most populous country is fighting armed violence on more than one front at once, and that rural communities are caught between them.
No group has claimed the Binnari attack, and police say the identities of the attackers have yet to be established. Local sources suggested the gunmen may have come from neighbouring Plateau State, though that claim has not been independently verified. No arrests have been reported.
For earlier deadly attacks on Nigerian communities, see our coverage of the Borno firewood massacre, in which at least 28 villagers were killed, and the Boko Haram ambush that killed a Nigerian army major and five soldiers in Yobe State.
