“Armed bandits” targeted the village of Sabon Garin Damri in Zamfara state Friday, the report said, the latest attack in a region where residents in rural hinterlands have long suffered from gangs who kidnap for ransom, loot villages and demand taxes.

The report said this was the first “mass capture” incident in the Bakura local government area this year, “the recent trend of mass captures in Zamfara has been concerning,” noting “a shift in bandit strategy toward more large-scale attacks in northern Zamfara.”

A Zamfara police spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Nigeria’s “banditry” crisis originated in conflict over land and water rights between herders and farmers but has morphed into organised crime, with gangs preying on rural communities that have long had little or no Government presence.

The conflict is worsening a malnutrition crisis in the northwest as attacks drive people away from their farms, in a situation that has been complicated by climate change and western aid cuts.

Last month, bandits in Zamfara killed 33 people they had kidnapped in February despite receiving a $33,700 ransom, while three babies died in captivity, officials and residents told AFP.

– Bandit-jihadist cooperation –

Since 2011, as arms trafficking increased and the wider Sahel fell into turmoil, organised armed gangs formed in northwest Nigeria, with cattle rustling and kidnapping becoming huge moneymakers in the largely impoverished countryside.

Groups also levy taxes on farmers and artisanal miners.

Violence has spread in recent years from the northwest into north-central Nigeria.

Two weeks ago, Nigerian troops killed at least 95 members of an armed gang in a shootout and airstrikes in the northwest state of Niger.

But the military is overstretched. While improved cooperation between the army and air force has aided the fight, analysts say, airstrikes have also killed hundreds of civilians over the years.

Bandits, who are primarily motivated by money, have also increased their cooperation with Nigeria’s jihadist groups, who are waging a separate, 16-year-old armed insurrection in the northeast.

The recent emergence of the Lakurawa jihadist group in the northwest has worsened violence in the region.

Governments of affected states have been forced to recruit anti-jihadist militias fighting the militants in the northeast to assist in countering the bandits.