Nigerian soldiers turned back gunmen who struck Tara village in Sabon Birni council area of Sokoto State late Thursday night, security sources said.
Zagazola Makama, a security monitor, posted on X that troops from the 8 Division Garrison based at the Forward Operating Base in Gatawa received intelligence of terrorist movement around 11:50 pm on 11 April. The soldiers raced to the scene, traded fire with the attackers and forced them to flee, Makama wrote, adding that no casualty count had been released. Patrols and surveillance have since been stepped up across the locality.
The Forward Operating Base in Gatawa proved its worth by intercepting the raid before the gunmen could settle in, a rare tactical win in a zone that has seen whole villages sacked within minutes.
Sabon Birni sits on the porous border with Niger Republic where camps of ISWAP-aligned bandits treat the terrain as a highway; the fact that intelligence reached the base in real time suggests local informant networks are finally beginning to trust the military enough to talk.
For residents who have endured repeated mass abductions and market burnings, the difference is stark: a firefight that ends with the attackers running means fewer midnight treks into the bush and children sleeping in their own beds. The army's next test is to turn this single success into sustained dominance of the supply routes that feed the bandits' motorcycles and ransom economy.
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