Sharjah24 : Air strikes targeting camps of gangs of cattle thieves in northwest Nigeria's Sokoto state, near the border with Niger, killed many people, local sources said Sunday.
Nigerian military jets on Saturday bombed two camps in Isa district controlled by two gangs that have carried out deadly attacks on remote villages in recent weeks, the sources said.
This was the first such attack on bandits in the region.
But heavily armed gangs of cattle thieves and kidnappers for ransom known locally as bandits have terrorised northwest and central Nigeria for years, raiding and looting villages, and attacks have intensified in recent months.
"The military conducted aerial attacks on Tsaika and Dangwandi villages, where large numbers of bandits were killed," a local administrator in Isa district said.
"It is hard to say how many were killed but the toll is quite high as the camps were strewn with corpses of the bandits," said the local official who asked not to be named.
The fighter jets struck the two camps in simultaneous attacks, leading to large-scale "human and material damage to the terrorists," a security source in the region said.
"The two camps have been scorched and dead bodies and pulverized structures litter the camps," said the security source.
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