Police have restored order in a Muslim village in Nigeria’s central highlands that was attacked by militants from a Christian ethnic group, sparking a clash in which at least 67 people died, an official said on Tuesday.
”The situation is under control. The combined military and mobile policemen despatched to the area early yesterday [Monday] have quelled the violence,” Plateau state information commissioner Dauda Lamba said from the state capital, Jos.
Muslim villagers who fled the village of Yelwa-Shendam following Sunday’s overnight attack have told local reporters that the final death toll could be as high as 350, with a mass grave being dug after militiamen sprayed the village with heavy-calibre fire from machine guns mounted on jeeps.
But Lamba was more cautious: ”We are still collating the casualty figures. But I can confirm the figure given by the state commissioner of police who put the death toll at 67. I know dozens of other people may be missing.”
”I am talking of those who fled because of the fighting. But I am sure many of them will return when the situation is normal. I don’t want to risk the temptation of considering those still missing as dead,” he explained.
Mohammed Ahmed, a motorcycle taxi driver from Yelwa-Shendam, told reporters on Monday he had fled after the village was attacked by a militia unit from the rival Tarok community, which arrived with two jeeps mounted with machine guns.
”It is Tarok men who attacked us. If you hear the sound of their guns, you will think that the heavens want to fall. Many women and children were killed. I saw this,” he said, adding that the militia had sealed off the town.
He said that up to a hundred people could have been killed and that all the Muslims in Yelwa-Shendam have fled to the village of Kurgwi in the nearby Quaan Pan local government area for fear of further attacks.
Ahmed said that he had been able to escape because he had already sent his family out of the town for safety, and was able to race off on his motorbike.
Ethnic and sectarian clashes are commonplace in central Nigeria, particularly in Plateau state where fighting often pits various ethnic groups against one another in a battle for fertile land.
The Tarok are mainly Christian and are subsistence farmers, while their Hausa and Fulani rivals are often nomadic herdsmen, whose livestock threaten their neighbours’ crops.
Nigerian security forces attempt to keep order in the area, but have proved incapable of enforcing a lasting peace.
There have been several recent reports of large-scale massacres in Plateau and neighbouring Taraba, but accurate casualty tolls are hard to obtain in a remote and permanently unsafe area of the country. — Sapa-AFP