The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, part of the global Red Cross humanitarian network, says at least 162 people have been killed in a deadly attack in Kwara State, a west central state in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. Okay News reports that the updated figure makes the incident one of the most severe attacks recorded in the area in recent months.
A Red Cross official in Kwara State said the killings happened late on Tuesday, 3 February 2026, when armed men attacked a community in the Kaiama area, a local government region in Kwara near Nigeria’s border with Benin. The official said the search for victims was still ongoing, and more bodies could be found.
“Reports said that the death toll now stands at 162, as the search for more bodies continues,” Babaomo Ayodeji, the Kwara State secretary of the Red Cross, said.
The state governor, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, earlier confirmed that 75 people had been killed. He gave that figure on Wednesday night, 4 February 2026, while speaking to residents at the palace of the Emir of Kaiama, a traditional ruler in the area. He said the victims were “local Muslims massacred for refusing to surrender to extremists preaching a strange doctrine.”
AbdulRazaq also said Nigeria’s President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, had approved the immediate deployment of an army battalion under Operation Savannah Shield, a Nigerian military security operation in the region, to begin counter offensives against those responsible for the attack.
A lawmaker representing the Kaiama area, Sa’idu Baba Ahmed, said initial counts after the raid showed heavy casualties. He said between 35 and 40 bodies were counted following the attack on Tuesday evening, and he warned that the number could rise as search teams continued to look through surrounding areas.
Police in Kwara State confirmed that an attack happened but did not release an official casualty figure. The Kwara State government also confirmed the violence and blamed “terrorist cells” for the killings.
Ahmed said many residents fled into nearby bush areas after being shot, and he believed additional bodies could still be discovered. He said the attackers entered Woro village, a settlement in Kaiama, at around 6:00 in the evening on Tuesday and set shops on fire. He added that the palace of the traditional ruler was also burned during the raid.
In Woro, the lawmaker said the whereabouts of the local king were not immediately known. The Red Cross official identified the traditional ruler as Alhaji Salihu Umar.
In a statement condemning the incident, Governor AbdulRazaq described the assault as “a cowardly expression of frustration by terrorist cells following the ongoing counterterrorism campaigns in parts of the state.”
Kwara and other parts of Nigeria have faced repeated violence from different armed groups. In many rural areas, heavily armed criminal gangs, often referred to locally as bandits, have been accused of raiding villages, stealing livestock and property, and kidnapping people for ransom. Nigeria has also experienced intercommunal violence in parts of the country’s central region, as well as jihadist insurgencies, especially in the northeast and northwest.
The latest attack in Kwara came after the Nigerian military said it had recently carried out operations in the area against what it described as terrorist elements. Nigeria’s armed forces have intensified campaigns against jihadist groups and armed gangs in several regions, and the army often reports large numbers of militants killed during operations.
On Friday, 30 January 2026, the military said it had launched “sustained coordinated offensive operations against terrorist elements” in Kwara State and recorded what it called notable successes. Local reports later said soldiers had “neutralised” 150 bandits, a term commonly used to mean they were killed.
In its statement, the army said troops had “successfully neutralised” terrorists, while others escaped into forest areas. It also said forces cleared hideouts and stormed remote camps that had previously been difficult for security teams to reach. The military said several abandoned camps and logistical support sites were destroyed, which it said reduced the ability of the fighters to operate.
Security analysts have warned that extremist activity has been spreading in parts of Nigeria that were previously less affected. Jihadist attacks increased in 2025, including incidents linked to the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), an Al Qaeda affiliated militant coalition that has been active across parts of the Sahel region of West Africa. The group claimed responsibility for what it described as its first attack in Nigeria, which was also reported in Kwara State in 2025.
Researcher and analyst Brant Philip said the latest raid happened about four kilometres from the site of a previous JNIM attack in October 2025. He suggested the proximity pointed to a “direct overlap” between areas linked to JNIM and Boko Haram, the Islamist militant group that began an insurgency in northeastern Nigeria in 2009, and he said both groups appeared to be operating in zones that may be connected through a loose alliance.
After the killings and earlier security threats, authorities in Kwara State imposed curfews in some locations and closed schools for several weeks. Schools were later directed to reopen on Monday, 2 February 2026.
The wider security crisis in Nigeria has drawn increased international attention in recent months, including after United States President Donald Trump alleged a “genocide” of Christians in Nigeria. Nigeria’s government and many independent experts have rejected that claim, arguing that the country’s violence affects both Christians and Muslims, and that many victims are attacked without regard to religion.
The violence on Tuesday, 3 February 2026, was not limited to Kwara. In Katsina State, a northern state in Nigeria that has frequently recorded bandit attacks, suspected armed gangs killed 23 civilians in what a security report prepared for the United Nations described as reprisal assaults. The report said the killings followed recent military operations in which Nigeria’s Air Force said it killed 27 militants.
