A day after a Nigerian police patrol, villagers were kidnapped.

At least 22 individuals were kidnapped from a Nigerian abduction hotspot just one day after it was monitored by the country's police chief.

This stretch of the Abuja-Kaduna highway in Kaduna state's northwestern region is notorious for attacks blamed on armed gangs called locally bandits that undertake massive money-making abduction operations.

Residents told the BBC that on Sunday night, a huge group of criminals dressed in military clothes and holding sophisticated weaponry assaulted Anwar Maji village, which is near the highway.

They allegedly proceeded from home to house, picking their victims and marching them away under duress. Until some of the victims who escaped later returned to claim they had been kidnapped, many people assumed it was a military operation.

It comes on the heels of last week's tragic attack on a crowded train traveling from Abuja to Kaduna. The airport in Kaduna was reportedly targeted earlier this month.

Armed gangs have killed hundreds of people and caused others to abandon their homes in Nigeria alone in the last 24 months.