JOS, Nigeria (AFP) — Unidentified attackers have killed nearly 50 people in Nigeria’s Plateau state, a Red Cross source said Monday, in the latest bout of violence in a religiously mixed region known for intercommunal conflict and deadly land disputes.

The Sunday night attack on the villages of Zike and Kimakpa, in the Bassa local government area, comes less than two weeks after armed men struck multiple villages in the Bokkos area, also in the central state of Plateau, killing 48.

The attack struck some 25 kilometres (15 miles) from the Plateau state capital Jos.

Land disputes, often between Muslim Fulani herders and mostly Christian farmers, are prone to descend into deadly violence in Plateau, especially in rural areas where law enforcement is largely absent and impunity is widespread.

“I can confirm …that 47 persons have died, 22 others were injured and taken to hospital, five houses were burnt down,” the Red Cross official told AFP.

Dorcas John, a resident of Zike, told AFP: “The attackers, unknown to us, came into the community and were shooting anywhere, and they killed eight people.”

John Adamu, of Kimakpa, said the attackers killed 39 people in his village.

The motive for the killings and the identity of the attackers were unknown as of Monday. Police officials did not respond to a request for comment.

– Intercommunal violence –
Though millions of Nigerians of different backgrounds live side by side, intercommunal violence often flares in Plateau state.

Researchers say that the drivers of conflict in Plateau are often complicated.

As Africa’s most populous country has continued to grow, so has the amount of land that farmers use, while grazing routes have come under stress from climate change.

Land grabbing and political and economic tensions between local “indigenes” and those considered outsiders, as well as the influx of hardline Muslim and Christian preachers, have heightened divisions in recent decades.

When violence flares, weak policing all but guarantees reprisal attacks, experts say.

Last week, army troops recovered the headless body of a 16-year Fulani herder in the Bassa area. His cattle were also stolen.

After the killings in Bokkos earlier this month, a local official told reporters that the violence was the result of “ethnic and religious cleansing” by attackers “speaking the Fulani dialect”.

A local herder association slammed the remarks, saying that the Fulfulde language, as it is formally known, is widely spoken in the country, “even (by) criminals”.

Muslim community group JNI warned after last week’s attack: “We fear that the way things are going, if not well-managed, it could lead to anarchy.”

The Plateau state government condemned the most recent killings “in strong terms”, calling them “unprovoked.”

The state commissioner of information and communication, Joyce Ramnap, said that the “series of attacks pose an existential threat to the lives and livelihoods of the peace-loving people of the state”.

Global rights group Amnesty International condemned the latest killings and called on President Bola Tinubu to set up an independent panel “to investigate the apparent failure of security agencies to halt the bloodshed”.

“The bloodshed must end now, and suspected perpetrators brought to justice,” Isa Sanusi, country director for Amnesty International in Nigeria, told AFP.