A large number of suspected militia had invaded a region of Benue State overnight, according to police spokesperson Anene Sewuese Catherine in a statement released on Friday. In response to the deadly clashes between farmers and herders, which has claimed hundreds of lives in recent years, the attack occurred.
Five farmers were killed in Benue’s Ukum area when security forces were deployed and the assailants “were being repelled in the early hours of today,” according to the report.
About 70 kilometers from the site of the first attack, according to police, a second attack occurred in Logo.
Unfortunately, a simultaneous attack was carried out in a nearby town, where 12 people were killed before police arrived, according to the police spokesperson.
Just two days prior to the attacks, 11 people were killed in the Benue Otukpo region and just one week after gunmen attacked villages and killed more than 50 people in Plateau State.
More than 500 people have been killed and 2.2 million have been forced to leave their homes in the region as a result of clashes between nomadic cattle herders and farming communities, according to research firm SBM Intelligence.
The clashes between Christian farmers of the Berom and Irigwe ethnic groups and Muslim Fulani herders are frequently depicted as ethnoreligious.
Regardless of their faith, analysts claim that farmers and herders are being pitted against one another by climate change and the lack of pastoral land.
Source: Aljazeera
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