Armed bandits killed six miners in northern Nigeria's Kaduna state, police said on Friday, an area beset with ethnic and religious tensions with frequent clashes between farmers and herders. "Some unknown gunmen killed six people - four men and two women - at a mining site in Bakin-Kogi on Thursday," state police spokesman Mukhtar Aliyu told AFP.
He said a female miner was also injured in the incident. "Military and police personnel have launched a manhunt for the attackers and we will not rest untill they are apprehended," he said.
"We cannot say at this stage who was responsible for the attack, only investigation will determine who was behind it," he said. Aliyu declined to say if the attack was linked to the herder-farmer conflict, insisting it was "premature" to speak on the identity of the attackers.
Bakin-Kogi is situated in the Jema'a district in the southern part of Kaduna state, a hotbed of ethnic and religious tensions.