At least 162 people have been killed in attacks by armed extremists on two villages in western Nigeria, in one of the deadliest assaults in the country in recent months.
The attacks took place on Tuesday evening in the villages of Woro and Nuku, in Kwara state, according to Mohammed Omar Bio, a member of Nigeria’s parliament who represents the area.
Mr Bio said the attackers were members of Lakurawa, an armed group linked to the Islamic State. No group has so far claimed responsibility for the killings.
A senior official with the Red Cross earlier said that “scores of people” had been killed, but warned that access to the affected communities remained extremely difficult.
Ayodeji Emmanuel Babaomo, secretary of the Red Cross in Kwara state, said aid workers had been unable to reach the villages because they are in a remote area close to Nigeria’s border with Benin. The journey from the state capital takes about eight hours, he said.
“The situation is very serious, but our teams have not yet been able to get to the communities,” Mr Babaomo said.
The governor of Kwara state, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, condemned the attack, calling it a “cowardly expression of frustration by terrorist cells”.
In a statement released on Wednesday, he said the violence was a response to ongoing military operations against armed groups in the region.
Nigeria is facing a widening security crisis, with several forms of violence affecting different parts of the country. In the northeast, Islamic militant groups have been fighting an insurgency for more than a decade. In the northwest and north-central regions, kidnappings for ransom and attacks by gunmen have increased sharply in recent months.
In a separate incident on Tuesday, gunmen killed at least 13 people in the village of Doma, in Katsina state in northwestern Nigeria. The state police confirmed the attack but said it was not yet clear who was responsible.
Only last week, Boko Haram extremists killed at least 36 people in northeastern Nigeria in two separate attacks, one at a construction site and another at an army base.
Nigeria is home to several armed groups linked to the Islamic State. These include the Islamic State West Africa Province, a breakaway faction of Boko Haram that operates mainly in the northeast, and the lesser-known Islamic State Sahel Province, which is known locally as Lakurawa and is active in the northwest.
The Nigerian military has previously said that Lakurawa has its roots in neighbouring Niger and became more active in Nigeria’s border areas after a military coup in Niger in 2023.
However, some analysts have questioned who was responsible for the latest killings in Kwara state.
James Barnett, a researcher at the Hudson Institute in Washington, said the attack was likely carried out mainly by Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad, known as JAS, a Boko Haram faction that has been behind several recent massacres in the area.
Nigeria’s worsening security situation has drawn increased international attention. On Tuesday, the head of US Africa Command confirmed that the United States had sent a small team of military officers to Nigeria as part of its response to the crisis.
In December, US forces carried out air strikes against militants linked to the Islamic State inside Nigeria.
Africa’s most populous country has also been under diplomatic pressure from Washington. Former US president Donald Trump has previously threatened action against Nigeria, accusing its government of failing to do enough to protect Christian communities.
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