Nigeria: At least 100 killed in gun attack in Benue state village, Amnesty International claims

At least 100 people have been killed in a gun attack in a village in north-central Nigeria, Amnesty International has claimed.

The human rights group’s branch in Nigeria said the attack occurred between Friday evening and Saturday morning in Yelewata, a community in the Guma area of Benue state.

“Many families were locked up and burnt inside their bedrooms,” the group said in a post on X. “So many bodies were burnt beyond recognition.”

It said hundreds of people were injured and were without adequate medical care, while dozens of others were missing.

A police spokesperson in Benue confirmed that an attack took place in Yelewata but did not specify how many people had died.

Amnesty noted in a statement that there had been an “alarming escalation of attacks across Benue state where gunmen have been on a killing spree with utter impunity”.

“The Nigerian authorities’ failure to stem the violence is costing people’s lives and livelihoods, and without immediate action many more lives may be lost,” it added.

Last month, gunmen, believed to be herders, killed at least 20 people in the Gwer West area of Benue.

In April, at least 40 people were killed in the neighbouring state of Plateau.

Benue is in Nigeria’s ‘middle belt’, a region where the majority Muslim north meets the largely Christian south.

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Attacks are common in Nigeria’s northern regions, where local herders and farmers often clash over limited access to land and water.

Farmers accuse the herders, mostly of Fulani origin, of grazing their livestock on their farms and destroying their produce.

The herders insist that the lands are grazing routes that were first backed by law in 1965, five years after the country gained its independence.