Local police claimed Tuesday morning that gunmen attacked a passenger train in northwestern Nigeria on Monday night, leaving "hurt and dead" among the almost 1,000 passengers on board. **
On Monday evening, "bandits" ambushed an Abuja-Kaduna passenger train. "Passengers who were injured or who died have been transferred to hospitals," authorities said in a statement released Tuesday.
Samuel Aruwan, the head of security in Kaduna State, did not provide an exact death toll or disclose whether any passengers had been kidnapped, but did state that "a rescue mission was ongoing." On Tuesday morning, the passengers stuck on board the train were evacuated.
According to Fidet Okhiria, chief executive of the state-owned Nigerian Railway Corporation, several persons are believed to have been abducted during the "extraordinary" incident.
The train was attacked at around 9 p.m. local time near Rijana station, on the route connecting Abuja, the country's capital, to Kaduna, a city in the country's northwest, where militants had attempted to attack the airport the previous weekend.
According to multiple sources, the attackers detonated explosives and fired a huge number of rounds before being defeated an hour later by soldiers stationed nearby.
Many kidnappings for ransom have occurred on the route connecting Abuja and Kaduna, the primary road leading to Kano, the country's second largest city and a major commerce hub in the Sahel, for several years.
As a result of the rising level of insecurity, more passengers are opting for the more expensive but safer train or airline.
However, the situation appears to have deteriorated in recent months: gunmen attempted to assault the same train line in October, and the military thwarted an attack on Kaduna airport last Saturday, where militants murdered a security guard and temporarily disrupted air operations.
