By Dalena Reporters | November 8, 2025
A night‑time raid in Bargaja village, Isa Local Government Area of Sokoto State, has left numerous residents dead, and at least more than ten young women abducted, according to local sources and eyewitness accounts.
The attack occurred around 10:00 p.m. on Thursday when heavily armed Islamic Terrorists gunmen on motorcycles stormed the village, firing indiscriminately and setting homes alight. Villagers, caught off‑guard in the darkness, fled into nearby bushes in panic.
Witnesses said the assailants appeared to operate with brutal precision: they separated young women from the crowd, bundled them onto waiting motorcycles and fled into the forested outskirts. A resident who narrowly escaped described the scene:
“They came in large numbers, shooting in every direction… They took away our young women and left us in fear and sorrow.”
While the exact death toll has not been independently verified, community leaders say “several” villagers were killed, and others are missing amid the chaos.
Residents believe the perpetrators are loyal to bandit leader Bello Turji, whose faction has long been blamed for mass abductions and attacks across northwest Nigeria — including Sokoto, Zamfara and Katsina states. On this occasion, the abducted women were reportedly taken toward the forest‑fringe hideouts east of Isa, a known stronghold of Turji’s network.
Officials from security agencies have not yet issued a formal statement on the incident, though local vigilante groups and civil‑society actors are calling for immediate military and police intervention to rescue the abducted and contain further violence.
This latest assault underscores the deep‑rooted insecurity in Nigeria’s northwest, where remote rural communities remain vulnerable to nightly raids, abductions for ransom, and terror‑driven disruptions of livelihoods.