According to the governor’s office, armed group with assault guns kidnapped 32 persons from a train station in Nigeria’s southern Edo state.
As passengers waited for a train to Warri, an oil center in neighbouring Delta state, around 4pm (15:00 GMT), armed herdsmen attacked Tom Ikimi station, according to a statement from the police released on Sunday. The station is located around 111 kilometers (69 miles) northeast of Benin City, near to the border of Anambra state.
According to officials, some persons at the station were shot during the incident.
The incident is the latest evidence of escalating insecurity in Africa’s most populous country, offering a challenge to the administration ahead of the February presidential election.
One of the 32 persons the kidnappers abducted managed to escape, according to Chris Osa Nehikhare, the information commissioner for the state of Edo.
“At the moment, security personnel made up of the military and the police as well as men of the vigilante network and hunters are intensifying search and rescue operations in a reasonable radius to rescue the kidnap victims,” he said. “We are confident that the other victims will be rescued in the coming hours.”
The federal transport ministry referred to the kidnappings as “utterly barbaric” and the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) has shut down the station till further notice.
A train service that connects the Nigerian city of Abuja with the northern Kaduna state was resumed by the NRC in December, months after assailants blew up the rails, abducted more than 150 passengers, and killed six people.
It took until October for the final hostage taken in the March incident to be released.
Nigeria is seeing an increase in insecurity due to separatist activity in the southeast, Boko Haram and its ISIL (ISIS)-affiliated offshoots in the northeast, banditry in the northwest, and conflicts between farmers and herders in the central states.
The federal transport ministry referred to the kidnappings as “utterly barbaric” and the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) has shut down the station till further notice.
A train service that connects the Nigerian city of Abuja with the northern Kaduna state was resumed by the NRC in December, months after assailants blew up the rails, abducted more than 150 passengers, and killed six people.
It took until October for the final hostage taken in the March incident to be released.
Nigeria is seeing an increase in insecurity due to separatist activity in the southeast, Boko Haram and its ISIL (ISIS)-affiliated offshoots in the northeast, banditry in the northwest, and conflicts between farmers and herders in the central states.
