Over 100 villagers have lost their lives in a fresh gun attack against the people of in Yelewata, a local community in the Guma area of Benue state, Amnesty international has claimed.
Benue is in Nigeria’s ‘middle belt’, a region where the majority Muslim north meets the largely Christian south.
Gun-wielding Fulani herders in Nigeria
Amnesty International has claimed that the attack occurred between Friday evening and Saturday morning and that hundreds of people were injured and were without adequate medical care, while dozens of others were missing.
“Many families were locked up and burnt inside their bedrooms,” the group said in a post on X. “So many bodies were burnt beyond recognition.”
A police spokesperson in Benue confirmed that an attack took place in Yelewata but did not specify how many people had died.
The killings of innocent people in Benue state has been going on for months with no clear approach to stop this by the government.
Amnesty claimed that there had been an “alarming escalation of attacks across Benue state where gunmen have been on a killing spree with utter impunity”.
Fulani Gunmen attack in Nigeria
“The Nigerian authorities’ failure to stem the violence is costing people’s lives and livelihoods, and without immediate action many more lives may be lost,” it added.
In May 2025, gunmen, believed to be herders, killed at least 20 people in the Gwer West area of Benue. In April 2025, at least 40 people were killed in the neighbouring state of Plateau.
These kind of attacks have been linked to the Fulani herdsmen who are predominantly local herders. The local farmers often clash with the herders because their cows often feed on the crops of the farmers thereby destroying the harvest of the local farmers. Headers also clash with farmers over limited access to land and water.
Farmers continue to accuse the herders, mostly of Fulani origin, of grazing their livestock on their farms and destroying their produce.
Whenever the farmers resist the invasion of cows into their farm or killed the cow, this usually result into the herders attacking the farmers and villagers with gun.
