Gunmen who stormed
a village and torched dozens of houses in central Nigeria have displaced about
200 people after weekend attacks that left more than 100 dead, police and an
official said on Wednesday.
The latest
violence in Nigeria's troubled Plateau state was blamed on Fulani herdsmen, a
majority Muslim pastoralist group said to have carried out the two weekend
attacks in the same area.
"More than 40
houses were razed down and all the people have been displaced," the governor's
spokesman Pam Ayuba told us, who said the Fulani were also responsible for the
raid late Tuesday. No deaths were reported.
A police source in
the state who requested anonymity confirmed the account, but a military
spokesperson downplayed the scale of the incident.
"Yesterday
evening there was an attack, not really an attack actually, just some hoodlums
who burned some houses," Captain Salihu Mustapha of the military's State
Task Force (STF) told us.
Ayuba voiced
frustration at the military's response to the running violence in the area,
where gunmen killed more than 80 people on Saturday during raids on several
villages.
At least 22
people, including two senior politicians, were killed on Sunday during an
attack at a funeral for the victims of the previous day's violence.
"I don't know
why they [the military] are being so economical about the truth of what is
happening on the ground," Ayuba said.
Curfew
"We have
always wondered about the security that the government is providing... We no
longer feel very secure. We are completely being targeted for elimination from
our land," he added.a
Fulani
representatives counter that the pastoralists have been discriminated against
and stripped of grazing areas vital to their welfare.
The Boko Haram
Islamist group that has carried out scores of attacks across northern and
central Nigeria since the middle of 2009 has also struck in the Plateau.
A curfew in four
areas imposed after the weekend violence has since been relaxed, with residents
now confined to their homes from dusk-to-dawn, Ayuba said