At least 30 feared dead in midnight attack on Kaduna community

At least 30 people have been killed after gunmen attacked Naridon village in Kamaru Ward of Kauru Local Government Area, Kaduna State, in what Amnesty International has described as one of the deadliest recent assaults on communities in southern Kaduna.

According to the rights group, the attackers stormed the village around 1 a.m. on Monday, opening fire on residents before pursuing many who fled into nearby bushes.

Amnesty said the death toll could rise further, as many residents remain missing and additional bodies were still being recovered from homes and surrounding farmland as of Monday.

“The community has declared many people missing, and efforts are ongoing to ascertain the number of people killed, while more dead bodies are being discovered, within homes and nearby farms,” the organisation said in a statement.

The organisation said evidence it reviewed indicated entire families were killed inside their homes during the attack.

Amnesty linked the latest killings to what it described as the Nigerian authorities’ continued failure to protect vulnerable rural communities from recurring armed attacks.

“President Bola Tinubu claims he has repeatedly tasked security agencies to end the killings so that rural communities can go to bed with their eyes closed, but clearly nothing has changed,” the organisation said.

It added: “The spate of these killings is evidence of the failure of authorities to protect the people. The inability of authorities to bring attackers to justice is fueling impunity.”

Southern Kaduna has witnessed repeated attacks over the past decade, with communities frequently targeted by heavily armed assailants, leading to hundreds of deaths, widespread displacement and the destruction of homes and livelihoods.

Amnesty said several villages in the area have suffered similar attacks multiple times, warning that Monday’s assault could rank among the deadliest recorded in the region in recent years.

The latest attack comes despite repeated assurances by the federal government that security operations have been intensified to curb violence across Nigeria’s rural communities.

As of the time of publication, the Kaduna State Police Command had not issued an official statement on the incident.

Efforts by other media organisations to reach the police spokesperson, Mansir Hassan, and the Chief Press Secretary to Kaduna State Governor Uba Sani were unsuccessful.

Pluboard has also reached out to the Kaduna State Police Command and the Kaduna State Government for comments on the attack, the casualty figures and the ongoing security response. This story will be updated as soon as official responses are received.