At least 32 people have been abducted at a train station in Edo state, southern Nigeria, the country’s authorities have said.
The government announced that a search and rescue operation led by the security forces and local hunters has begun. Authorities have reportedly arrested one suspected kidnapper, and at least one person kidnapped in the incident has escaped.
This is the latest incident which comes barely a month before the presidential election Among those taken were station staff and passengers waiting for a train.
There have been increasing concerns about attacks in the country. The latest incident comes in the month before a presidential election where security is a significant campaign issue.
Reports say that on Saturday a large number of gunmen, armed with AK-47s, shot in the air as they entered the station in Igueben before seizing the travellers and staff and taking them to a nearby forest.
Some of those who managed to flee sustained bullet wounds, eyewitnesses have been quoted as saying. One woman with a baby also reportedly escaped and found her way to a neighbouring community where she has been rescued.
The kidnappers also released two children as it was “believed that they felt the children will slow down their movements”, a local resident is quoted by the Vanguard newspaper as saying.
Edo state government spokesperson Chris Osa Nehikhare said that many people had started using the train as the local road had become “a no-go area, with huge ransoms being collected from families of [kidnap] victims”.
Incidents of kidnapping for ransom and gunmen targeting communities for political reasons have been on the rise in recent years in Nigeria.
