Nigeria abduction: Tinubu orders Niger State rescue

Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu ordered security forces on Tuesday to launch a rescue operation for dozens of people abducted in Niger State in western Nigeria.

Tinubu said on X that he had directed the armed forces, police, Department of State Services and other security and intelligence agencies to begin a coordinated rescue operation immediately.

Suspected jihadists abducted and killed people during Friday prayers in the villages of Dikera and Binzi. No official toll has been released.

A video circulating on social media showed several hundred people, many of them women and children, gathered in a forest and presented as hostages taken from Dikera. No ransom demand was mentioned.

A survivor told AFP last week that the assailants were members of Lakurawa, a jihadist group that some researchers have linked to a regional branch of the Islamic State movement. Another survivor blamed Ansaru, another local jihadist group.

Nigeria has been battling a jihadist insurgency for 17 years. The insurgency is concentrated in the northeast, but Friday's attack struck a central western zone near the Benin border.