A file picture taken on March 8, 2010 in Dogo Nahawa shows natives gathering at a mass burial of their kinsmen killed during a religious crisis. More than 100 people were killed in weekend attacks on three villages in central Nigeria, local officials said yesterday. Scores of residents were also injured when about 40 assailants armed with guns and machetes stormed the villages of Angwan Gata, Chenshyi and Angwan Sankwai, attacking locals in their sleep and torching their homes, said Yakubu Bitiyong, a lawmaker at the Kaduna state parliament.

DPA/AFP/Reuters/Abuja

Up to 200 people are thought to have been killed by gunmen in attacks on three villages in central Nigeria, the news website Naij and other local media reported yesterday.
Kaduna state police spokesman Aminu Lawan confirmed the attacks but refused to give a casualty toll or say who was behind the violence.
The figure of 200 was based on estimates of the number of victims in each village.
Dozens of heavily armed attackers, believed to be Fulani herdsmen, arrived in Ugwar Sankwai, Ungwar Gata and Chenshyi villages in Kaduna state early on Saturday.
Some reports gave the name of the third village as Tekum instead of Chenshyi.
“All the houses were burned down by the attackers while people who attempted to run were gunned down,” CKN Nigeria quoted Chenshyi resident Nuhu Moses as saying.
The victims included a pastor’s wife and children, Moses said.
Men, women, children and elderly people were gunned down or hacked with machetes while others were burned to death in their homes, said a traditional chief who declined to give his name for fear of being attacked.
“They took scores of our people with them into forests in all the villages,” he told Sahara Reporters news website.
Yakubu Bitiyong, a lawmaker at the Kaduna state parliament told AFP: “We have at least 100 dead bodies from the three villages attacked by the gunmen” overnight Friday-Saturday, adding that scores of residents were also injured.
Some of the victims “were shot and burnt in their homes while others were hacked with machetes”, Bitiyong said.
According to a local government official who asked not to be named, around 2,000 people displaced by the attacks were now sheltering in a primary school in Gwandong village.
Kaduna state governor Mukhtar Ramalan Yero vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice and ordered a full investigation, according to the National Mirror.
Police officers were sent to the affected villages.
Saturday’s attack came less than 24 hours after a similar one in Benue state, in which suspected Fulanis sacked several villages and killed more than 30 people.
Earlier this week, attackers believed to be Fulani cattle rustlers killed at least 113 people in several villages in Katsina state.
“I came back from the market and there were bullets flying all around the village,” said Pius Nna, 64, of Ungwar Gata village.
He escaped by jumping across an open well and fleeing into the bush.
“I saw three people running into my house to take refuge. They were hacked to death before my eyes,” he said, adding that he saw a Fulani neighbour directing the gunmen where to go.
The unrest in central Nigeria is not usually linked to the insurgency in the northeast by Boko Haram, an Al Qaeda-linked group which wants to impose Islamic law in northern Nigeria.
However, analysts say that there is a risk the insurgents will try to stoke central Nigeria’s conflict.
Although most of the Islamist sect’s attacks are contained further north, it did claim a 2011 Christmas Day bomb attack at a church in the central city of Jos.
“We are still picking bodies out of the bush but so far there are more than 100 killed,” said Daniel Anyip, vice-chairman of the Kaura local government authority.
Andrew Kazah, another local councillor, said at least 96 had been killed, but that the toll was likely to go up.
Human Rights Watch in December said sectarian clashes in the religiously mixed central region had killed 3,000 since 2010, adding that Nigerian authorities had largely ignored the violence, an accusation they denied.
Though it sometimes takes on a sectarian character, the violence is fundamentally driven by decades-old land disputes between semi-nomadic, cattle-keeping communities such as the Fulani and settled farming peoples such as the Berom, both often armed with automatic weapons.
Bulus Mallam, 49, said he saw Fulani herdsman pour petrol on the roof of his house in Ugwar Sankwai and set it ablaze.
His wife and 22 children and grandchildren managed to escape as the attackers were concentrating on looting mattresses, palm oil and maize.
“I thank God no one was killed in my household. My brother was not so lucky. They burned him and 40 people hiding in his house alive,” he said.
Of the village’s 200 inhabitants, at least 57 were killed, he said.
Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation with almost 170mn people, split roughly equally between Christians and Muslims and around 250 different ethnic groups who mostly live peacefully side-by-side.
Nigeria is almost evenly split between the Muslim majority north and largely Christian south. Religion and ethnicity underpin daily life.
Kaduna and the neighbouring state of Plateau make up Nigeria’s so-called middle belt where the two religions often clash.
Fulani leaders have for years complained about the loss of grazing land which is crucial to their livelihood, with resentment between the herdsmen and their agrarian neighbours.
Most of the Fulani-linked violence has been concentrated in the religiously divided centre of the country, where rivalries between the herdsmen and farmers have helped fuel the unrest.
The weekend attacks in the flashpoint region recall the sectarian-fuelled violence following the last presidential elections in 2011, which saw southern Christian Goodluck Jonathan defeat northern Muslim candidate Muhammadu Buhari.
Buhari’s supporters took to the streets, claiming the vote was rigged. Their protest became violent and Human Rights Watch estimated that more than 500 people were killed, most of them Muslims, in southern Kaduna.
The run-up to the next presidential vote in February 2015 has again been dominated by a row between northern Muslims and Christians, this time in Jonathan’s own ruling party, where northerners claim a candidate from their regions should run.
Jonathan has yet to officially declare that he will stand for re-election but his apparent refusal to step aside has prompted a series of defections of governors, lawmakers and senators to the opposition.