Two Christians Killed, 18 Seized in Kaduna Raid Today

Gunmen attacked Akwando village in southern Kaduna State, Nigeria, at around 12:30am on Wednesday, November 4, 2026, killing two Christians and abducting about 18 people, most of them married women and children from a single extended family. The hostages include infants aged between four months and one year, according to the Resilience Aid Dialogue Initiative, which first reported the raid.

The attack came in the dark, as so many of these attacks do. Families were asleep when armed men laid siege to the village in Kachia Local Government Area, and by morning the community was counting its losses: two dead, eighteen gone, and a village left to wonder who would come for them next. As of the first reports, Nigerian authorities and police had given no public responce to the raid.

What makes Akwando different from a grim statistic is how personal the loss is. Reuben Buhari, co-founder of the Resilience Aid Dialogue Initiative (RADi), said most of those taken are his own family: cousins, their children and their grandchildren. The hostages number 15 females and three males.

Two married men were named in connection with the assault, Irimiya Galadima, 41, and Benjamin Danlami, 31, though early accounts did not make clear whether they were among the dead or the captives.

Kaduna Christians killed in Akwando village attack

Akwando had been hit before. On April 26, 2026, nine schoolchildren were kidnapped on their way to school in Kachia and freed only after 36 days.

That history hangs over the village now, because families here know from experience that a kidnapping is not a single night of terror. It is weeks of waiting, of ransom demands, of not knowing whether the people you love are alive, and of the slow emptying of a place that was once home.

The pattern is familiar across southern Kaduna. Night assaults, abductions, villages emptied of their people.

The Church continues to call for the protection of the faithful, the release of the captives and justice for those killed, but the calls have been made so many times that they now sound like a litany. Each new attack adds names to a list that never seems to get shorter.

The violence in Nigeria has not stayed in one state. In Benue, a pastor was killed in a market attack only recently, as reported in Pastor Terungwa Tyonungo Killed in Benue Market Attack, and the same fear that keeps worshippers from their churches in Kaduna is felt by Christians under pressure in very different places, including India, where churches have pulled back from children's ministry, as covered in Maharashtra Churches Scale Back Bible Camps for Children.

Southern Kaduna Christians abducted: the wider pattern

Days before the Akwando raid, Christian Solidarity Worldwide Nigeria raised the alarm at a service in Kaduna marking the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church. Its chief executive, the Rev. Dr Yunusa Nmadu, told worshippers at ECWA Goodnews Church that insecurity in parts of Kaduna had become so severe that Christians could no longer attend church services freely without fear of attack.

Nmadu laid out a record that is hard to read without flinching. On April 5, 2026, gunmen invaded three churches in Ariko community, also in Kachia, during services, killing five people and abducting 37 others, mostly women and children. Seventeen of those worshippers later died in captivity, and only eight returned home five months later.

On April 20, eleven people were kidnapped in Awon village; one escaped, six died, and four remained in captivity more than six months on, reportedly in critical condition. On January 18, 177 worshippers were reportedly kidnapped during Sunday services in three churches at Kurmin Wali in Kajuru.

Nmadu said Christians accounted for about 99 per cent of victims in some of the communities affected by insecurity in northern Nigeria, where persistent attacks, mass kidnappings, sexual violence and displacement have forced thousands from their homes and disrupted religious life. He also called for the release of Leah Sharibu and other long-held captives, a name that still carries weight years after her abduction.

Fulani militia accused over southern Kaduna land takeover

Southern thought leaders have gone further, accusing the Fulani Ethnic Militia of a deliberate campaign to eliminate male Christians in parts of southern Kaduna so their lands can be taken over. The accusation, reported by TruthNigeria, rests on a grim observation: men kidnapped alongside women and children have, in case after case, never come back alive, even after ransom payments were made.

Buhari's own account of the Ariko kidnapping makes the point starkly. Of the 37 worshippers taken on April 5, five men were killed on the day, twelve victims later escaped, seventeen died in the kidnappers' camp, and only eight returned home.

"All the males were killed," he wrote. In Awon, the four who eventually returned alive were all women and children. These are accusations made by community leaders, not findings of a court, but they shape how frightened families understand what is happening to them.

The scale of displacement behind the accusations is enormous. Jonathan Asake, former president of the Southern Kaduna Peoples Union, told TruthNigeria that at least 245 villages had been displaced, with an estimated population of over 500,000 people, and that more than 6,000 square kilometres of land had been taken over.

Ado Alipiri, chairman of the Kajuru internally displaced persons, said armed attackers had chased people from over 110 villages in Kajuru alone as of October 2026. Only Christian villages are displaced and occupied, he said, while the authorities look away.

What happens to the Akwando hostages now

For the families of Akwando, the questions now are the same ones every kidnapped community in Kaduna has faced: how much will the captors demand, how long will the waiting last, and will the men among the hostages come home at all. The infants taken in the raid, some only months old, make the waiting harder to bear. A village that has already lost nine children to kidnappers once this year now has eighteen more of its own in the bush.

The attacks on churches and Christian gatherings have not stopped, and the fear they spread reaches beyond the villages that are hit. When a chapel is vandalised or a congregation is attacked, the message travels, as reported in Mother Mary Grotto Vandalised in Bengal's Raidighi Village. In Kaduna, the message is that gathering to worship can itself be dangerous, and that the state may not answer when the call for help goes out.

Eighteen people are missing from Akwando tonight. Two are dead. One extended family has been torn apart, and a whole region is watching to see whether anyone, anywhere, will act before the next village is woken at half past midnight.

The Church is praying for their release. The families are waiting for something more than prayer: protection, justice, and the safe return of the people taken from their beds.

But the most surprising part of this story is yet to come — keep reading.