Two Christian farmers were killed on Monday and two others went missing in fresh attacks by suspected Muslim-Fulani nomads in Nigeria’s central Plateau State, police and residents said.
The Fulani nomads allegedly attacked the farmers who were working on their farms ahead of the rainy season in Christian-dominated Riyom village, 30km south of Jos, capital of the volatile state.
“We received reports that four people were declared missing in Riyom after they went to the farm in the early morning but never returned,” Plateau State police spokesperson Mohammed Lerama said on the phone from Jos.
“A search team discovered two bodies out of the four missing farmers. The two others are still unaccounted for,” Lerama said.
Riyom resident, Daniel Pam, blamed Fulani nomads for the attack.
“It is obvious the killings were carried out by the Fulani nomads who have been on the prowl in the last two months,” Pam also said on phone from Riyom village.
He said angry youths from the village barricaded the roads linking Jos to southern Nigeria in protest, disrupting traffic before they were dispersed by soldiers.
An overnight attack on the village last month by marauding Fulani nomads claimed 13 lives while a dozen houses were burnt.
The Nigerian army said on Monday it had averted an attack by suspected Muslim extremists on a mainly Christian Bisichi village in the flashpoint central Plateau State, killing two gunmen.
The pair were part of a gang that planned to raid the village, on the outskirts of Jos, where hundreds of people have been killed in ethno-religious violence, a military commander said.
The attack early on Monday was foiled by members of a military task force deployed in the area following recent violence.
Jos has long been the centre of ethno-religious violence in a country whose 150 million population is divided almost equally between Christians and Muslims.