Police said gunmen raided a mosque in Delta state, southern Nigeria, on Friday, wounded 11 attendees and attempted to kidnap the imam.
The attack happened early in the morning at a mosque in Ughelli, near the oil city of Warri.
“Eleven (people) were hurt,” police spokeswoman Bright Edafe confirmed to AFP.
He stated that an investigation was underway to identify the suspects.
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According to local media, which cited a community leader and a victim, an imam was taken during the incident.
According to police, “it was the goal to kidnap him (the imam), but they (the gunmen) did not succeed.”
Kidnappings are prevalent in Nigeria, and they are mostly perpetrated for monetary gain by criminals known as bandits, who have no ideological reason.
Delta state’s security had improved since the early 2000s, when terrorist groups routinely targeted oil sites or kidnapped oil employees.
Hundreds of recent assaults in neighboring southeastern states, however, have been blamed on the outlawed separatists, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) group and its armed wing, the Eastern Security Network.
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IPOB, which seeks a separate state for ethnic Igbo people, has denied responsibility for the violence on numerous occasions.
President Muhammadu Buhari, who took office in 2015 and was re-elected in 2019, is under pressure to address Nigeria’s security issues before stepping down after the February elections.
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