Nigeria Orders Rescue Operation After Armed Group Claims 600 Abducted From a Mosque

An armed group has posted video appearing to show hundreds of women, children and older people held in a forest clearing in Nigeria's Niger State, days after simultaneous attacks on several villages during Friday prayers. The Nigerian government has ordered a full military and police rescue operation — but even officials admit they do not yet know exactly how many people were taken.

On Friday, August 21, armed attackers struck multiple communities in the Borgu area of Niger State, north-central Nigeria, including Dekara, Kpenya, Sabon-Gida and Gidan-Zana, hitting a mosque during Friday prayers. Local residents say a large group of worshippers — women, children and elderly people — was taken. Three days later, on Sunday, August 24, an armed group posted video on Facebook and WhatsApp showing what residents identified as the missing worshippers, seated under guard in a wooded area. No group has publicly claimed responsibility, though one witness told AFP the attackers belonged to Lakurawa, an increasingly active armed faction researchers have linked to the Islamic State Sahel Province.

Niger State sits in a corridor security analysts describe as a transit route for arms and fighters moving across West Africa, and mass kidnappings for ransom have escalated there since the start of 2026. If the figures residents are describing hold up, this would rank among the largest and most brazen mass abductions in Nigeria in recent years — a direct test of a government that has repeatedly promised to contain exactly this kind of attack.

Local residents and community leaders say roughly 600 people were abducted from the Dekara-area mosque attack, but Reuters and other international outlets have not been able to independently verify that number, and Niger State's own government said days after the attack that it was still working to confirm how many victims there actually were. A Borgu district official said separately that 30 people were found killed and were buried on Sunday, a figure that has likewise not been independently confirmed. The Dekara community head said at least 2,000 residents fled across the border into neighboring Benin in the attack's aftermath. What is confirmed: President Bola Tinubu has ordered the Armed Forces, the Nigeria Police Force, the Department of State Services and other security and intelligence agencies to launch an immediate, coordinated rescue operation, with security chiefs required to brief him regularly until everyone taken is accounted for.

Tinubu framed the response as a test of the state's resolve, telling security chiefs "terror will not cow Nigeria" and pledging regular public updates on the rescue effort. Community leaders in Borgu have pushed back on any suggestion the scale of the attack is being understated, while Niger State's government has urged caution on the unverified casualty and abduction figures circulating on social media until an official count is complete.

The rescue operation Tinubu ordered on August 26 is still in its early stages, and neither the true number of people abducted nor their exact location has been officially confirmed. Security chiefs are expected to brief the president regularly as the operation continues, but Nigerian mass-kidnapping cases have historically taken anywhere from days to months to resolve, and it remains unconfirmed whether the video showing the captives was even filmed at the location or on the date it claims.

A mass abduction during Friday prayers has triggered a full national rescue operation in Nigeria, but three days on, even the government itself says it cannot yet confirm how many people were actually taken — a reminder that in fast-moving mass-kidnapping cases, the first viral numbers are often the least reliable part of the story.