At least 12 people were killed and several others injured on Sunday after gunmen attacked a neighborhood in the mostly Christian city of Jos, in Nigeria’s north-central region, the police said on Monday.
But residents said many more had been killed.
Jos is the capital of Plateau State, the center of a long-running conflict between farmers, who are mostly Christian, and herders, who are mostly Muslim, in Nigeria’s Middle Belt. Violence usually occurs in rural areas in the region, but the city of Jos has seen major clashes in the past. The most recent was in 2010, when hundreds of people were killed during three months of violence.
The attackers on Sunday walked into a popular local bar, pretended to buy drinks and then began shooting those inside, residents said. Others arrived in vehicles and fired at people gathered around a roadside market and a nearby church, where community members had gathered to celebrate Palm Sunday.
No one has claimed responsibility for the killings, and the police have yet to arrest the gunmen.
In the hours after the attack, two witnesses who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal said, local youth began to block major roads and target individuals perceived to be Fulani, an ethnic group that is predominantly Muslim.
Kabir Adamu, an analyst with a security firm in Nigeria, said that those responsible for the attacks on Sunday probably wanted to incite retaliatory violence. “Clearly, whoever is behind the attack seems to be more interested in triggering that kind of reaction,” he said.
“It happened on a Palm Sunday,” he added, and noted that Plateau State has been one of the centers of “the conversation around Christian genocide.”
Representative Riley Moore of West Virginia is one of several U.S. congressmen who have falsely claimed that there is a Christian genocide happening in Nigeria. Analysts say that the situation in the country is much more complex and that Nigerians of many faiths have been killed. Much of the violence, they say, is fueled by criminals, rather than religious or ethnic tensions.
In a social media post on Monday, Mr. Moore warned of “serious consequences” for Nigeria’s relationship with the United States if Nigeria failed to protect “our brothers and sisters in Christ.”
The governor of Plateau State, Caleb Mutfwang, said security agencies had been deployed to track down the attackers. He declared a 48-hour curfew across the Jos North local government area, a move some locals have threatened to ignore.
Samson Chioma, a youth leader, said he had rushed to the site of the attack shortly after it occurred. He counted 28 bodies, he added, and later shared the figure in a meeting with Mr. Mutfwang.
“If the government does not take any decisive action on this killing, we as members of the community will take our own action,” he said.
Dickson Adama contributed reporting from Jos, Nigeria.
Saikou Jammeh is a reporter and researcher for The Times based in Dakar, Senegal.
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