Suspected Muslim gangs burned homes in a Christian village near the Nigerian city of Jos, which has been at the centre of tit-for-tat attacks this year that have left hundreds dead, officials said.
The suspected ethnic Fulani attackers targeted homes belonging to three top officials in the ethnic Berom village of Kura Jenta, about 30km south of Jos, residents said.
“Apparently the attackers were on a murder mission, they wanted to use the same tactics used in Dogo Nahawa, setting homes ablaze and then waiting for people to come out to be killed,” a local cleric Raymond Gboum told Agence France-Presse.
The occupants of the houses — built with concrete blocks and zinc roofs — did not come out until the attackers had fled, he added.
The targets were two former senior government officials and a brother of a local chairperson of Jos south local government area, residents said.
Army spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Galadima Sherika said at least three houses and four cars were torched in the attack staged shortly after midnight.
Kuru Jenta is close to Kuru Karama, a former mining village and Muslim enclave in a Christian district south of Jos, where attackers killed more than 150 Muslim villagers in January.
Corpses were stuffed in water wells, pits, and sewer and irrigation canals, while others were burnt.
Fulani herdsmen launched a wave of attacks on five Christian Berom villages in March, slaughtering more than 500 people according to state officials.
Jos, capital of the central Plateau State, has long been the centre of ethno-religious violence in a country whose 150-million-strong population is divided almost equally between Christians and Muslims. — Sapa-AFP