At least 74 people were killed this week in two separate attacks by armed groups, officials say.
At least 74 people were killed in two separate attacks by gunmen this week in Benue state, north-central Nigeria, local officials and police have reported.
Violence in the region has increased in recent years as population growth leads to an expansion of the area devoted to agriculture, reducing the amount of land available for open grazing by nomadic cattle herds.
Benue State Police spokesman Catherine Anene said 28 bodies were recovered from a displaced persons camp in Mgban local government area between Friday evening and Saturday morning.
It was not immediately clear what triggered the attack, but witnesses said gunmen arrived and began firing, killing several people.
The attack followed a separate incident in the same state on Wednesday in the remote Umogidi village in Otukpo local government area, when suspected herders killed villagers at a funeral, Otukpo chairman Bako Eje told Reuters news agency.
Paul Hemba, a security adviser to Benue state governor, said 46 bodies had been recovered following Wednesday’s attack.
President Muhammadu Buhari in a statement on Saturday condemned “the recent onslaught of killings in Benue state that killed dozens of people in the Umogidi community” and ordered security forces to strengthen surveillance in the affected areas.
Many attacks in remote parts of Nigeria go unreported because scarce security forces often respond too late to emergency calls from communities.
Benue is one of Nigeria’s Middle Belt States where the predominantly Muslim north meets the predominantly Christian south.
Competition for land use is particularly fierce in the Middle Belt, where fault lines between farmers and pastoralists often overlap with ethnic and religious divisions.
Benue is one of the states hardest hit by years of disputes between nomadic herders and pastoral farmers who blame herders for destroying farmland while their cattle graze.
Those conflicts have often turned into wider crime and revenge attacks between informal armed groups set up to protect rival communities.
A spokesperson for the national herders’ association this week urged officials not to blame the herders for each attack until they conduct a proper investigation.
Separately on Saturday, gunmen abducted at least 80 people in Zamfara state, a hot spot for kidnappings for ransom by armed gangs targeting remote villages.