ICC News: New details have emerged from Benue State, Nigeria, where over the past month, radical Islamist Fulani cattle herders have massacred more than 500 native agrarian Christians and continue to occupy their villages. The deadly assaults represent the latest in a broader crisis where herdsmen have killed thousands of Christians and razed towns across central Nigeria since 2001. Eyewitnesses to the devastation in Benue speak of bodies littering the landscape because survivors remain to afraid to return and bury the dead, according to Morning Star News.
3/15/16 Otukpo, Nigeria (Morning Star News) – More than two weeks after the massacre of an estimated 300 predominantly Christian farmers in Benue state in central Nigeria, attacks continued this week as Muslim Fulani herdsmen remained in the area, sources said.
While a government official said this week that the herdsmen had begun to leave of their own accord, area residents said the marauding herdsmen and their cattle were still occupying villages in Agatu Local Government Area, and it was unclear when thousands of displaced people would be able to return to their homes.
Muslim Fulani herdsmen began attacking Agatu on Feb. 22, with 300 people killed by Feb. 29, sources said. The heavily-armed herdsmen reportedly slaughtered at least eight others on Tuesday (March 8) in Benue’s Logo Local Government Area. It was not immediately possible to independently verify the report.
Steven Enada, a development advocate campaigning against the killing of the Agatu people, told Morning Star News that thousands of cattle remain in the conquered areas.
“In the last three weeks, Aku, Odugbeho, Aila, Okokolo and Ikobi have been utterly destroyed and over 300 people have been killed,” he said. “We have corpses littered in the field like a war fought in the Roman Empire by Emperor Nero.”
Ikwulono John Anthony, an indigene of the affected Christian communities who visited the area shortly after the attacks, said today that the Fulani herdsmen are still in some areas.
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