Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/ABUJA: Nigerian authorities have said their armed forces rescued six of the 32 people who were abducted at a train station in Edo state in southern Nigeria.
Among those kidnapped were station staff and the passengers waiting for the train. A suspect has also been arrested in this regard.
There have been increasing concerns about the attacks in the country and the latest incident happened a month before a presidential election with security being the main concern.
Six victims Rescued
Reports said that on Saturday, shooters armed with AK-47s shot in the air as they entered the train station in Igueben before seizing the travellers and staff and taking them to the nearby forest.
Eyewitnesses have been quoted as saying some of those who managed to flee sustained bullet wounds. One woman with a baby also escaped and found her way to the neighbouring community.
The kidnappers released two children as it was “believed that they felt the children could slow down their movements”, a resident was quoted by the Vanguard newspaper as having said.
Chris Osa Nehikhare, Edo state government spokesperson said that people had started using train as the local road had become “a no-go area, with huge ransoms being collected from families of the victims.”
The federal government has condemned the abduction of the passengers, describing it as “despicable and utterly barbaric”.
Incidents of kidnapping for ransom and shooters targeting communities for political reasons have recently been on the rise in Nigeria.
In December, an effective rail service linking the capital, Abuja, with the northern city of Kaduna, resumed nine months after at least nine passengers died during a gun attack on the train line. Many others were taken away as hostages; the last one was released in October.
Insecurity is one of the critical issues for candidates ahead of Nigeria’s general elections in February, when a successor to President Muhammadu Buhari will be chosen.
