Air Troops of Operation Thunder Strike have neutralised around 20 bandits at the General area of the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA), Kaduna.
It was learnt that the terrorists, moving in about 50 motorcycles were seen on Thursday evening. But they met their waterloo as two Nigerian Air Force (NAF) helicopter gunships were dispatched to engage them.
Recall that bandits, invaded the NDA in June 2021 when they abducted a Nigerian Army Major and shot two soldiers dead.
Bandits are heavily armed criminal gangs that have terrorised Nigeria’s rural northwest and northeast, killing, kidnapping, forcing people from their homes, and taunting the authorities with their brazenness.
The violence typically involves scores of gunmen on motorbikes sweeping into villages, shooting all the young men they can find on the assumption they belong to local vigilantes, and then carting away livestock and anything else of value.
The raids are increasingly daring. In the last few months, bandits have downed an air force jet; attacked the military’s officer training school; struck a prestige commuter rail service running between the capital, Abuja, and the city of Kaduna; and kidnapped students for ransom from schools and colleges so many times that education is now in peril.
