Residents report 30 killed in village attack in Nigeria's Kaduna state

Residents said at least 30 people were killed when armed men attacked Naridon village in Kaduna state’s Kaura council area late Sunday night, with eight children among the dead. Four more people were wounded, and security personnel arrived hours after the assault, leaving villagers to count the toll before any official figure was issued.

Two residents described the attackers as armed men, and Dogon Rana, secretary to the village head, said gunmen “stormed the community shooting randomly and burning houses.” No group had claimed responsibility, and the attack added to a long record of violence in Southern Kaduna, where communities have repeatedly faced raids, kidnappings, cattle rustling and reprisals.

The location sharpened concern because Naridon sits in a part of Kaduna state that residents have long described as exposed and hard to protect. Derek Christopher, chairman of the Southern Kaduna Peace and Security Network, said the same community was attacked last year around the same time, a pattern that reinforces local fears that villages are being hit again before they recover from the last assault.

Kaduna has been one of Nigeria’s most troubled states in recent years, and the latest killings fit a wider cycle of insecurity across the northwest, where armed groups and criminal gangs exploit weak security coverage and difficult terrain. The stakes go beyond the village itself: repeated attacks displace families, cut farmers off from their fields and deepen mistrust in the state’s ability to protect remote communities.

The episode also recalls earlier mass-casualty attacks in the state. Reuters reported in December 2022 that gunmen killed at least 38 villagers in Kaduna state, and in another northwest Nigeria attack the death toll later doubled to more than 130 as more bodies were found and reported. Those cases show how quickly casualty figures can rise in rural violence, especially when security forces arrive late and official counts lag behind eyewitness accounts.

For communities in Southern Kaduna, the immediate fear is not only the number killed but the repeated pattern behind it: villages struck, help arriving late and families left to bury their dead while the same roads and fields remain vulnerable to the next attack.