{{Fighting between Fulani herdsmen and farmers from the Eggon ethnic group has left at least 60 people dead in central Nigeria, mostly from machete cuts, police said on Thursday.}}<\/p>\n
The clashes broke out on Wednesday in Nasawrawa state, a week after some Eggon villagers accused Fulanis of stealing cattle, Nasarawa police spokesman Umaru Ismaila said by telephone.<\/p>\n
“The report we have is 60 dead from the clash in Tudun-Ababu village,” he said. “Some bodies were burned beyond recognition.”<\/p>\n
Hundreds have been killed in the past year in clashes pitting the semi-nomadic, cattle-herding Fulani people against settled communities that practice a mix of farming and cattle rearing, driven mostly by disputes over land use.<\/p>\n
A battle in the northwest of Africa’s most populous country between suspected Fulani cattle rustlers and youths from the rival Hausa group killed 72 people in April.<\/p>\n
Sometimes communal clashes in Nigeria appear to take on a sectarian character, as in some parts of the “Middle Belt” area around Jos, whose indigenous farming communities are largely Christian, while the Fulanis are overwhelmingly Muslim.<\/p>\n
Gunmen, suspected to be Fulanis, killed more than 100 people in an attack on three mostly Christian villages in March.<\/p>\n
But disputes are, at their roots, about land and ethnicity.<\/p>\n
Human Rights Watch in December 2013 said clashes in central Nigeria had killed 3,000 people since 2010, accusing Nigerian authorities of ignoring the violence, a charge they denied.<\/p>\n
Ethnic violence tends to worsen around election time — Nigeria faces a presidential poll in February 2015 — as politicians exploit ethnic rivalries to cement their power bases.<\/p>\n
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{{Fighting between Fulani herdsmen and farmers from the Eggon ethnic group has left at least 60 people dead in central Nigeria, mostly from machete cuts, police said on Thursday.}} The clashes broke out on Wednesday in Nasawrawa state, a week after some Eggon villagers accused Fulanis of stealing cattle, Nasarawa police spokesman Umaru Ismaila said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2000053687,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-16022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000053687,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton16022.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton16022.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton16022.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton16022.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton16022.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton16022.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16022\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000053687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16022"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=16022"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=16022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}