Muslims attacked a Christian village in central Nigeria on Saturday, killing eight people with machetes and burning seven houses and a church in fresh religious violence, a Nigerian army spokesman said.
The attack followed clashes in eastern Nigeria earlier in the week that also killed eight and left six mosques and a church burnt.
“It’s true eight people were killed,” Nigerian Lieutenant Colonel Kingsley Umoh said.
The attack occurred in Mazzah village, near the city of Jos, where deadly religious clashes have occurred a number of times in recent months.
Umoh said Fulani Muslims entered Mazzah between 1:30am and 5am, shooting sporadically in the air to lure sleeping residents outside their homes before they were killed.
“Seven people were killed instantly with machetes while three others were seriously injured. One of them died on the way to the hospital,” Umoh said.
He said troop reinforcements had been deployed to Mazzah, some 14km from Jos, the capital of central Plateau State, to prevent the violence from escalating.
The village was calm on Saturday afternoon, but some residents were seen leaving for Jos out of fears for their safety.
A senior Nigerian official, Gyang Pwajok, described the overnight attack on the mainly Christian village as an “act of terrorism.”
Plateau State lies in the so-called middle belt between the predominantly Muslim north and the mainly Christian south.
Jos has long been the center of ethnic and religious violence in a country whose 150 million population is divided almost equally between Christians and Muslims.
In March, Muslim herdsmen from the Fulani and Hausa ethnic groups launched attacks on five Christian Berom villages near the city, killing more than 500 people, state officials said.
Local rights groups say 1,500 people have died in inter-communal violence in the Jos region since the start of this year alone.
The clashes earlier this week occurred in Wukari, a town in the remote eastern Taraba state, over the building of a mosque.
A Christian mob opposed to the construction of the mosque razed it, police said. Muslims responded by attacking a nearby church, leading to the eruption of violent clashes between the two sides.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS