Armed group abducts 32 people from southern Nigeria train station

The incident comes a month after a practice service within the north, which was shut after a March 2022 assault, resumed.

A practice departs from Rigasa station in Kaduna, Nigeria [TJ Benson/Al Jazeera]

Attackers armed with assault rifles have kidnapped 32 individuals from a railway station in Nigeria’s southern Edo state, the governor’s workplace mentioned.

Police mentioned in a press release on Sunday that armed herdsmen attacked Tom Ikimi station at 4pm (15:00 GMT) as passengers waited for a practice to Warri, an oil hub in close by Delta state. The station is a few 111km (69 miles) northeast of state capital Benin Metropolis and near the border with Anambra state.

Some individuals on the station had been shot within the assault, police mentioned.

The assault is the most recent instance of the rising insecurity that has unfold to just about each nook of Africa’s most populous nation, posing a problem to the federal government forward of the February presidential election.

Edo state info commissioner Chris Osa Nehikhare mentioned one of many 32 individuals taken by the abductors managed to flee.

“For the time being, safety personnel made up of the navy and the police in addition to males of the vigilante community and hunters are intensifying search and rescue operations in an inexpensive radius to rescue the kidnap victims,” he mentioned. “We're assured that the opposite victims will likely be rescued within the coming hours.”

The Nigerian Railway Company (NRC) had closed the station till additional discover and the federal transport ministry known as the kidnappings “totally barbaric”.

In December, the NRC reopened a rail service linking the capital, Abuja, with northern Kaduna state, months after attackers blew up the tracks, kidnapped greater than 150 passengers and killed six individuals.

The final hostage taken in that March assault was not freed till October.

Insecurity is on the rise throughout elements of Nigeria, with Boko Haram and its ISIL (ISIS)-affiliated offshoots within the northeast, banditry within the northwest, separatists within the southeast and farmer-herdsmen clashes within the central states.