More than 30 people have been kidnapped from a train station in southern Nigeria's Edo state by gunmen with AK-47 rifles, according to the governor's office on Sunday.
The assault is the most recent illustration of the rising insecurity that has affected almost every area of Africa's most populous nation, providing a problem for the government ahead of a presidential election in February.
In a statement, the police claimed that at 4 p.m. (1500 GMT), armed herdsmen assaulted Tom Ikimi station as people waited for a train to Warri, a nearby oil town in Delta state. The station is near to the state border with Anambra and is located around 111 kilometres northeast of Benin City, the state capital.
According to officials, the shooting left some victims at the station.Chris Osa Nehikhare, the information commissioner for the state of Edo, claimed that 32 persons had been abducted, but one had already fled.
In order to save the victims of the kidnapping, security personnel—including members of the military, police, vigilante network, and hunters—are currently stepping up search and rescue operations within a fair radius. The other casualties will likely be saved in the ensuing hours, we are convinced.
The federal transportation ministry referred to the kidnappings as "utterly cruel" and the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) has shut down the station till further notice.
A rail service that connects the Nigerian capital Abuja with northern Kaduna state was reopened by the NRC last month, months after gunmen blew up the tracks, abducted scores of passengers, and killed six people.
It took until October for the final prisoner captured in the March incident to be released.
Nigeria is rife with insecurity, with separatist movements in the southeast, banditry in the northwest, Islamist insurgencies in the northeast, and battles between farmers and herdsmen in the central states.
