Gunmen open fire on bar in

Gunmen killed at least a dozen people in Jos, the capital of Nigeria’s restive Plateau state, sparking retaliation from a mob that killed 10 more, locals told AFP on Monday.

Plateau state, in central Nigeria’s Middle Belt region, experiences recurring violence in the countryside, mostly linked to land disputes between farmers and herders.

Jos has seen bouts of sectarian violence in the past, but deadly, mass casualty attacks in the crowded city have been rare in recent years.

At least 12 people were killed on Sunday when unidentified gunmen opened fire at a bar-cum-restaurant in the Anguwan Rukuba neighbourhood, in the Jos North district, said Plateau state Red Cross secretary Nurudeen Hussaini Magaji.

At least three people were killed when a mob formed to go after the attackers, he said, although others put the toll higher.

“The attackers shot people at a joint. We are told that 12 people died on the spot,” Mangalle Idris, a local youth leader, told AFP.

Then a mob formed and “attacked people that were either passing or doing business and they killed them.”

Idris said the mob killed 10.

Kabiru Sani, the deputy leader of Jos North local council, told AFP that 27 people in total were killed between the shooting and the retaliatory violence.

– History of ethnic tension –

In the countryside, Plateau state’s mostly Christian farmers and mostly Fulani Muslim herders have been clashing for years over land access, sometimes erupting into massacres where entire villages are emptied out.

Because the violence falls across ethnic lines, some — including politicians in both Nigeria and the United States — have characterised the killings as religiously driven, a view rejected by most experts.

Posts on social media after the Anguwan Rukuba attack variously blamed — without evidence — Fulani Muslim herders or “bandits”, as rural criminal gangs are known, for targeting Christians on Palm Sunday.

The state government said investigations were “ongoing”, without giving a toll or naming suspects, and ordered a curfew in Jos North from Sunday to Wednesday.

Plateau has witnessed deadly sectarian violence in the past, notably in 2001 and 2008.

But researchers blame the current, mostly rural, crisis on climate change, illegal mining and population growth squeezing available land.

Impunity for killings across rural areas largely abandoned by the state often spark recurrent reprisals.

Local politicians are also known to inflame tensions in Plateau, where the question of which ethnic groups are “indigenous” to the land is politically sensitive.