LAGOS, Nigeria: Nigerian security forces have rescued nearly 200 kidnap victims during raids on camps of criminal gangs in dense forests in the country's northwest, police said. Heavily armed gangs known locally as bandits have plagued northwest and central Nigeria for years, raiding and looting villages and abducting for ransom, but violence has surged over the past year. The rescued victims — 187 men, women and children — were freed in Zamfara State, where they had been kidnapped in separate bandit attacks, police said late Thursday (Friday in Manila). The rescue was part of a weeks-long broader military operation in Zamfara and other northwestern states that has included telecom blackouts to disrupt bandit communications.
