Over 100 killed in Central Nigeria in religious disputes
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[QUOTE]Gunmen killed more than 100 people in attacks on three villages in central Nigeria, an area where longstanding disputes over land, religion and ethnicity often erupt into violence, two local government officials said Sunday.
Police confirmed the raids blamed on herdsman from the predominantly Muslim Fulani tribe late on Friday on the villages of Ugwar Sankwai, Ungwan Gata and Chenshyi, in Kaduna state, but declined to give a death toll.
Hundreds have been killed in the past year in clashes pitting the cattle-herding Fulani people against mostly Christian settled communities like the Berom in Nigeria's volatile "Middle Belt," where its mostly Christian south and Muslim-majority north meet.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE]"Fulani gunmen came across from neighboring Plateau state and just opened fire on the villagers at around 11 p.m.," said Daniel Anyip, vice chairman of the Kaura local government authority. "We are still picking bodies out of the bush but so far there are more than 100 killed."
Andrew Kazah, another local councilor, said that at least 96 had been killed, but that the toll was likely to go up. Human Rights Watch in December said sectarian clashes in the nation's religiously mixed central region had killed 3,000 people since 2010, adding that Nigerian authorities had largely ignored the violence, an accusation the authorities denied.[/QUOTE]
[URL]http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/3/16/herders-kill-100innigerianlandconflict.html[/URL]
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