Nigeria gunmen kill eight police before senate primary

Gunmen killed eight police officers who had been sent to provide security for a senate primary election in Nigeria's northwestern Zamfara state, a resident and a local government official said.

Ibrahim Umar, a resident of Gidan Kano village, said the officers were ambushed on Monday on a rural highway linking Zamfara and neighbouring Sokoto state. He said the gunmen opened fire on the officers' bus, killed eight officers and took others into the bush.

Adamu Kantu Gora, secretary of Zamfara's Maradun local government council, gave the same death toll and said five more officers were kidnapped and three others were in hospital with injuries.

Yazid Abubakar, the Zamfara state police spokesman, said the officers had been sent from neighbouring Sokoto state to provide security for the election. He said the casualties were taken to Sokoto, but gave no further details.

The vote was being held to select a senate candidate for President Bola Tinubu's All Progressives Congress in the Zamfara North senatorial district. Monday's vote was ordered after a court threw out the previous poll in Zamfara North over irregularities.

Armed criminal gangs, locally called bandits, operate across parts of northwest and central Nigeria, where they raid villages, impose taxes on farmers and miners, and carry out kidnappings for ransom.

Nigeria is preparing for general elections in January while facing violence from criminal gangs, a jihadist insurgency, farmer-herder conflicts and a separatist conflict in the southeast.