According to Reuters, the herdsmen raided around 11 p.m. on the 14th. They chased some victims with machetes, gunned others down, and razed homes in three villages.
Witnesses described “bullets flying all around the village” and villagers hiding in the bush to escape the attackers.
The herdsmen are a “cattle herding… largely Muslim Fulani people” who have been attacking Christians “in disputes over land, religion, and ethnicity” for years. The attacks have become worse in Nigeria’s “Middle Belt,” where the “mostly Christian south and Muslim north meet.”
Nigerian Christians have also been targeted by the Islamist group Boko Haram. Unlike the attacks from the herdsmen, Boko Haram attacks are not due to land or ethnicity disputes but the Islamists’ desire to implement sharia law.
