Reports reaching DAILY POST say about 12 people have been killed in an early morning raid on Ashigye, a settlement on the outskirts of Lafia, the Nasarawa State capital.
The invaders, suspected to be cattle herders, reportedly attacked Migli farmers who set out to harvest their crops on farms along a bush path leading to Ashangwa and Amawo, near the state capital, survivors of the attack who fled to Lafia said.
According to the survivors, the marauders attacked Ashigye from different directions and opened fire on a convoy of four J5 Peugeot mini buses conveying farmers to their fields for yam harvest.
“They sprayed the convoy with bullets and killed 11 persons on the spot. Other persons tried to run but were shot by the Fulani invaders. We could not retrieve their bodies from the bush,” a survivor, who accompanied two trucks that brought in nine bodies into Dalhatu Araf Specialists’ Hospital (DASH) in Lafia, said.
It would be recalled that two other settlements at the brink of the state capital, Lafia had also been attacked in less than a week. In Kwarra, a woman was killed and five others abducted and raped in a nearby bush while at Agwede, three members of a family were killed on a farm, one of them a nursing mother who was beheaded.
The spokesman of the state police command, DSP Ugochukwu Theodore confirmed the raid on Ashigye, even though he refused to give the casualty figure. He said the command has deployed combat policemen to the area to restore normalcy.
In a swift reaction to the attack, the state secretary of Miyetti Allah, a Fulani association, Mohammed Hussain, denied that Fulani people were responsible for the invasion of Ashigye.
“We condemn the killing of Migli people in Ashigye and make bold to say that Fulani people did not carry out the attack. We call on law enforcement agencies to investigate this killing thoroughly and bring the perpetrators to book,” Hussain said.
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