ABUJA, March 18 (Reuters) - At least 18 people were killed on Tuesday in Nigeria's northwestern Katsina state, authorities and police said on Wednesday, exposing the fragility of peace pacts with gunmen with the second most deadly attack in a month.
Katsina and neighbouring states have pursued amnesty deals and community security pacts to persuade armed gangs known locally as bandits to surrender weapons, but rural villages still face sporadic raids, reprisals and tit-for-tat violence.
The latest assault began when a vigilante patrol killed three suspected bandits in Falale village, triggering a reprisal by armed men that killed 15 people in Falale and neighbouring Kadobe, said Nasir Mua'zu, Katsina's commissioner for security.
Katsina police spokesperson Abubakar Aliyu also said the reprisal attack left 15 people dead.
While there have been smaller assaults over the past weeks, the death toll in Tuesday's attack was the highest since February 3, when armed men killed at least 21 people in Doma town in Katsina state, leaving a six-month local truce in tatters.
Attacks by gangs of heavily armed men have wreaked havoc across Nigeria's northwest in recent years, kidnapping thousands, killing hundreds and making it unsafe to travel by road or on farms in some areas.
(Reporting by Camillus Eboh in Abuja and Hamza Ibrahim in Kano; Writitng by Elisha Bala-Gbogbo; Editing by Alison Williams)
