Five people including a child were shot dead in an overnight attack in violence-wracked central Nigeria over a cattle dispute, police and medical officials said on Friday.
Police in Plateau State said “cattle rustlers” stormed residential quarters of a soil conservation college in Vom, a Christian village on the outskirts of Jos, and killed the five, among them a three-year-old girl.
The suspects were after a herd of cattle belonging to one of the college workers, police said.
“Cattle rustlers went for the cows. They had rustled his cattle in the past and had recovered them,” Plateau State police commissioner Abdulrahman Akano told AFP.
“They went back and killed him plus four others,” said Akano, adding eight other people were wounded in the attack. There have been no arrests so far.”
Samuel Dido, the chief medical superintendent of Vom Christian Hospital, confirmed that five bodies from the attack had been brought to the hospital morgue and nine wounded people were hospitalised.
A witness speaking on condition of anonymity estimated the attackers were around 20. They made off with 30 cows owned by the college’s security officer, who was among those killed.
An electrician, an accountant, his wife and their daughter were the others gunned down.
Central Nigeria has been hit by waves of violence involving Christian and Muslim ethnic groups in recent years that have killed scores of people, and there has been a sharp increase in clashes ahead of April elections.
In Plateau State, part of the so-called middle belt between the mainly Muslim north and predominately Christian south, deadly clashes have frequently broken out.
The European Union this week said violence in central and northern Nigeria has left at least 300 dead in the past six weeks.
EU envoys urged Nigerian “authorities to take the necessary steps to bring perpetrators of violence to account” and to protect civilians regardless of their religious or ethnic background.
Feb122011