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An attack by gunmen killed at least 45 people in Plateau state in north-central Nigeria. Most of the victims are women and children. The Plateau is an ethnically and religiously diverse state and is often plagued by violent conflicts between farmers and semi-nomadic herders that have claimed the lives of hundreds of people.
At least 45 people, most of them women and children, were killed and several houses burned down after an attack by gunmen in a village in Nigeria’s Plateau state, in the center of the country.
“I can confirm that at least 45 bodies have been recovered, mostly children and women, including pregnant women, after an attack by armed men on the villages of Kubat and Fungzai,” the president of the Coalition of Youth Ethnic Nationalities told EFE. of the State of Plateau Paul Dakete.
“The attackers, who were Fulani herdsmen, stormed the two villages on Monday night and wreaked havoc among the villagers until early today,” Dakete said, adding, “It is shocking that most of the victims were women and children”.
A witness told Reuters that the attackers started shooting in the town and when some residents tried to flee, they were shot dead.
The number of victims could increase as more bodies were still being searched for. It was also reported that several houses in the town were destroyed during the attack.
According to state spokesman Makut Macham, state security forces were asked to pursue the attackers.
Macham also stated that the Police confronted the “bandits” and that their “great firepower” forced them to abandon their vehicles “used for their nefarious activities”.
unprecedented attack
“This is the fourth attack in recent years (in the Mangu area), but the scale of this latest attack is unprecedented,” Dakate said.
In the Plateau, ethnic-religious clashes are frequent between mainly Christian ranching communities and herders of the Fulani ethnic group.
However, in recent years, climate change and the scarcity of natural resources have increased competition for control of land, driving both communities into unrelenting conflict, regardless of their faith or ethnicity.
Plateau is also a neighbor to Kaduna State which is often subjected to attacks by gunmen and mass kidnappings for money.
On the other hand, Nigeria suffers from great insecurity in the north of the country where the jihadist group Boko Haram has been active since 2009. The Islamist sect supports the Islamic State organization and has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks, especially against Christians in the country. In 2014, he had kidnapped more than 200 female students in the northeast of the country.
According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), since 2004, more than 27,000 people have died at the hands of Boko Haram in Nigeria. While thousands of people had to flee the violence, there are more than 1.7 million people who have not been able to return to their homes.
With EFE and Reuters
