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Free Malaysia Today
5 days ago
- Politics
- Free Malaysia Today
Gunmen shoot 14 dead in ‘ambush' at north-central Nigerian market
Nigeria's restive Plateau state has long been gripped by conflicts over attacks by armed gangs known as 'bandits'. (EPA Images pic) JOS : Unidentified gunmen in Nigeria's restive Plateau state killed 14 people in an ambush yesterday as they returned home from a weekly market, local residents and a Red Cross official told AFP. The north-central state has long been gripped by conflicts over dwindling land and attacks by armed gangs known as 'bandits', mostly across rural areas where government presence is sparse and impunity is almost guaranteed. Following the ambush, two youths were killed in a revenge attack across ethnic lines, residents said. The gunmen opened fire yesterday evening on vehicles returning from the market in Bokkos town, residents said, near a village called Mangor. 'Some armed men ambushed them, they fired gunshots indiscriminately,' Moses Maren, a local youth leader, told AFP yesterday. State Red Cross secretary Nurudeen Hussaini Magaji confirmed the toll this morning. 'Amongst the dead were males, females and children,' he said. The Bokkos area is known as a major hub for potato farming in Nigeria. The town's Monday and Thursday markets host traders from as far away as Chad, Benin, Niger and Cameroon. Insecurity is a major factor in food inflation in Nigeria. Consultancy SBM Intelligence recently recorded price hikes of rice, onions and pepper seeing hikes by more than 430% in neighbouring Bauchi state, blamed on bandit attacks as well as drought. Land used by farmers and herders in central Nigeria, including Plateau, is coming under stress from climate change and human expansion, sparking deadly competition for increasingly limited space. Most farmers are Christian and most herders Fulani Muslim. Reprisals often fall indiscriminately across ethnic lines. Land grabbing, political and economic tensions between locals and those considered outsiders, as well as an influx of hardline Muslim and Christian preachers, have heightened divisions in recent decades. In retaliation for yesterday's attacks, 'aggrieved youths have stormed a Fulani settlement close to the place where the ambush took place', Shanono Usman, a local trader, told AFP, killing two. Sale Adamu, a resident of Bokkos and also local leader of the Fulani community, confirmed the toll.
Reuters
6 days ago
- Reuters
Gunmen kill 14 people returning from market in central Nigeria
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria, July 25 (Reuters) - Armed attackers ambushed a vehicle returning from a weekly market in the Bokkos area of central Nigeria, killing 14 passengers including women and infants, a local community leader said on Friday. The attack occurred at about noon on Thursday as the vehicle was carrying people back from the popular Bokkos market in violence-plagued Plateau state. Farmasum Fuddang, chair of the Bokkos cultural development forum, said the attackers had intercepted the vehicle and then opened fire. "Victims included women and little babies," Fuddang said in a statement. The latest killings follow calls for a stronger security presence in rural Plateau, one of Nigeria's several ethnically and religiously diverse central states where inter-communal conflicts have killed hundreds of people in recent years. Plateau police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
