At least 42 people have been killed in a wave of violent attacks carried out by suspected herders over the weekend in Gwer West Local Government Area of Benue State, central Nigeria, according to local authorities.
Victor Omnin, chairman of the Gwer West council, confirmed the casualties on Tuesday. He said that 32 bodies were recovered following coordinated assaults on the villages of Ahume and Aondona on Sunday, marking one of the deadliest single-day incidents in the district this year.
An earlier attack on Saturday claimed 10 additional lives in the villages of Tyolaha and Tse-Ubiam, Omnin added, bringing the total death toll to 42 over the two-day period.
The attacks are part of a broader pattern of violence between farming communities and armed herders in Nigeria’s Middle Belt region, where longstanding tensions over land use and grazing rights have frequently erupted into deadly clashes.
“It’s a pathetic situation. As we speak, we are still recovering corpses,” Omnin told journalists.
Benue State lies in Nigeria’s volatile Middle Belt, a region where the predominantly Muslim North converges with the largely Christian South. This geographical intersection has long been a hotspot for deadly disputes, often rooted in competition over land. Herders in search of grazing routes for their livestock frequently clash with farmers who depend on the same land for cultivation—tensions that deep-seated ethnic and religious divisions further inflame.
Amid the latest surge in violence that left at least 42 people dead over the weekend, Benue State Governor Hyacinth Iormem Alia’s office confirmed that a Catholic priest was also shot during one of the attacks. The priest is currently in critical but stable condition, the governor’s office said, highlighting the indiscriminate nature of the assaults that have terrorised rural communities in Gwer West Local Government Area.
