KANO, Nigeria, Feb. 25, 2026 — Gunmen killed at least 25 people and set homes on fire in twin attacks on Adamawa State communities late Tuesday, striking the villages of Kirchinga and Garaha near the Sambisa Forest, Reuters reported.
Residents said attackers arrived in military uniforms, then swept through Kirchinga and Garaha on motorcycles, torching houses and burning a school after hitting a nearby military base, details echoed by Reuters and Devdiscourse.
Conflicting tallies and flight
Local outlets said separate attacks also hit Sheweri, another Madagali-area community, with residents fleeing into nearby bushes amid gunfire and fires, according to Politics Nigeria and Independent.
Those local reports cited lower casualty figures, while Reuters and Devdiscourse put the death toll at 25 and said many villagers escaped to the town of Mubi, a discrepancy that highlights how rapidly evolving attacks can produce diverging early counts, Reuters and Devdiscourse reported.
Insurgency pressure in the northeast
The villages sit on the edge of the Sambisa Forest, a long-running base for Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province fighters, a key reason Adamawa and neighboring states remain prone to raids, according to Reuters and Devdiscourse.
NewsCentralTV and Politics Nigeria reported that Kirchinga is the hometown of Adamawa Governor Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri, a detail that has intensified local fears and political pressure to restore security in Madagali district, NewsCentralTV and Politics Nigeria said.
Security response and next steps
The governor condemned the attacks as terrorism and vowed to prevent militants from undermining stabilization efforts, while residents and local officials called for stronger security deployments to protect border communities, Reuters and Independent reported.
Security forces were reported to be mobilizing and investigating the attacks as displaced families sought shelter in safer towns, a pattern repeated in northeast Nigeria despite years of military campaigns, according to Independent and Devdiscourse.
How we report: We select the day’s most important stories, confirm facts across multiple reputable sources, and avoid anonymous sourcing. Our goal is clear, balanced coverage you can trust—because transparency and verification matter for informed readers.
Image Attribution ▾
Image: Location of Adamawa State in Nigeria (Nigeria – Adamawa.svg) Credit: Derivative work by User:Profoss; original work by Uwe Dedering Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nigeria_-_Adamawa.svg License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 (CC BY-SA 3.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0 Modifications: Rendered from SVG, resized to 1920×1080, and added a bottom label bar.
