Forty persons have been killed in another attack by assailants on Zike community, Kimakpa in the Kwall district of Bassa Local Government Area of Plateau State.
According to a Kwall community leader, Wakili Tongwe, the attackers invaded the village in the early hours of Monday and shot sporadically at residents who were scampering for safety after hearing gunshots.
The community leader told Channels Television on the phone that a team of vigilantes, including himself and some security personnel, were on patrol in another community when the attackers invaded the village and started shooting.
Though the security personnel engaged the invaders and succeeded in repelling the attackers, the damage had been done, with about thirty-six persons shot dead and four others dying later.
Some other residents sustained gunshot wounds and are receiving medical attention at the hospital.
Security agencies in the state are yet to comment on the attack, which is coming in less than two weeks after fifty-two persons were killed in some communities of the Bokkos Local Government Area of the North-Central state.
Plateau State has, for several decades, become a hotbed of killings, with gunmen sacking entire communities. Experts blame the fight for resources between farmers and herders as a major cause of the attacks.
Tensions have soared in the state since about 200 people were killed at Christmas 2023 celebrations during a bloody attack on a majority Christian village.
In May last year, around 40 people were killed and homes torched in the town of Wase.
But the governor of the state, Caleb Muftwang, says there is more to the attacks on the state.
“I can tell you in all honesty that I cannot find any explanation other than genocide sponsored by terrorists. The question is, who are the persons behind the organisers of this terrorism? This is what the security agencies must help us to unravel,” the governor said on a recent edition of Channels Television’s Politics Today.
The Federal Government has been talking tough following the recent wave of attacks, vowing to flush out the assailants.(Channels Tv)
