ABUJA, October 28 (Aalimi Nation) – At least 62 people were killed and 52 others wounded when gunmen attacked the Binnari community in Taraba State, northeastern Nigeria, last Friday, the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said. Police said the Taraba attack death toll could still rise as the search for bodies continues.
Ladan Ayuba, NEMA's head in Taraba, gave the casualty figures and said on Tuesday that thousands of people had been displaced. Binnari lies in the Karim-Lamido Local Government Area. The attackers have been described as bandits, the term widely used in Nigeria for armed criminal gangs.
Fifty-two bodies had been recovered at the latest count, including 15 taken from the Benue River, officials said. The gap between that number and the figure of 62 dead has not been explained in the accounts available. Police said the count is not final.
Victor Mshelizah, the Taraba police spokesperson, said officers were still searching. "We still have men on the ground, and the more we recover bodies, we will put them in account," he said.
Isa Sanusi, director of Amnesty International Nigeria, said the geography of the area worked in the attackers' favour. "What happened was that people were chased towards the river, they launched into the river trying to escape the bandits," he said.
Amnesty International's Nigeria office also criticised the authorities. It said rural communities in the north were being left "at the mercy of gunmen" who commit atrocities with impunity, and that statements condemning attacks are not enough. The organisation called for an impartial investigation and adequate reparations for survivors.
It was not immediately clear whether any arrests had been made, and no official account of what led to the attack was available. The accounts reviewed did not include a response to Amnesty's criticism from the Taraba government or the federal authorities.
Nigeria has faced a security crisis for more than 15 years, since the Boko Haram insurgency began in the north-east. Armed groups in the north regularly attack villages and kidnap residents for ransom, and bandit gangs are known to control some illegal mining sites. Islamist groups, including Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province, also attack civilians.
Researchers at the Institute for Security Studies, a policy research body, have linked the profits from illegal mining to arms smuggling and to rising violence across Nigeria and the wider Sahel region, as armed groups use the money to buy weapons and recruit fighters.
Officials have not given a timeline for completing the search of the river and surrounding areas. The tally of the dead is expected to change as more bodies are found and as the emergency agency and police reconcile their records. The thousands of displaced residents will need shelter, food and medical care, and NEMA is expected to update its figures as relief work continues.
Rights groups have asked for an independent investigation into the attack, and for compensation for survivors. Whether the federal or state government will order such an inquiry has not been announced.
