by Jude Owuamanam
No fewer than five people, including a 40-year-old woman and her two children, aged three and five, were killed in a fresh attack by suspected Fulani herdsmen in Mbar community in Bokkos Local Government Area of Plateau State.
More than 20 houses, including farmlands and houses, were also torched in the incident said to have happened at about 11.45pm on Sunday.
The assailants were said to have stormed the village with various types of weapons and started shooting sporadically. The pandemonium scared people away, after which the attackers embarked on killing and destruction of houses.
In an incident described as ’black Sunday for the people of community’, the gunmen sacked the entire community and set many homes ablaze.
The Plateau State Commissioner of Housing and Urban Development, Mr. Solomon Maren, who confirmed the attack, described it as barbaric.
He said that the community fingered Fulani herdsmen as the perpetrators of the violence as a Fulani man had been arrested in a similar incident, where two people were killed in the area. He added that the Fulani admitted that he was paid to attack Mbar.
Maren said that security personnel had been drafted to the community to prevent further loss of lives.
He said that the injured were taken to the Plateau Specialist Hospital and the General Hospital in Barkin Ladi and Bokkos, adding that rescue efforts were still going on to rescue more victims trapped in burning houses.
The commissioner disclosed that in one of the houses, five cars and three motorcycles were burnt.
