Gunmen kill 14 in north-central Nigeria market 'ambush'

A Nigerian military unit deployed to stop the fighting between Christian and Muslim ethnic groups heads to a troubled spot in Jos, Plateau State on April 2, 2011. [File, AFP]

Unidentified gunmen in Nigeria's restive Plateau state killed 14 people in an ambush Thursday as they returned home from a weekly market, local residents and a Red Cross official told AFP.

The north-central state has long been gripped by conflicts over dwindling land and attacks by armed gangs known as "bandits", mostly across rural areas where government presence is sparse and impunity is almost guaranteed.

Following the ambush, two youths were killed in a revenge attack across ethnic lines, residents said.

The gunmen opened fire Thursday evening on vehicles returning from the market in Bokkos town, residents said, near a village called Mangor.

"Some armed men ambushed them, they fired gunshots indiscriminately," Moses Maren, a local youth leader, told AFP Thursday.

State Red Cross secretary Nurudeen Hussaini Magaji confirmed the toll Friday morning.

"Amongst the dead were males, females and children," he said.

The Bokkos area is known as a major hub for potato farming in Nigeria.

The town's Monday and Thursday markets host traders from as far away as Chad, Benin, Niger and Cameroon.

Insecurity is a major factor in food inflation in Nigeria.

Consultancy SBM Intelligence recently recorded price hikes of rice, onions and pepper seeing hikes by more than 430 percent in neighbouring Bauchi state, blamed on bandit attacks as well as drought.

Land used by farmers and herders in central Nigeria, including Plateau, is coming under stress from climate change and human expansion, sparking deadly competition for increasingly limited space.

Most farmers are Christian and most herders Fulani Muslim. Reprisals often fall indiscriminately across ethnic lines.

Land grabbing, political and economic tensions between locals and those considered outsiders, as well as an influx of hardline Muslim and Christian preachers, have heightened divisions in recent decades.

In retaliation for Thursday's attacks, "aggrieved youths have stormed a Fulani settlement close to the place where the ambush took place," Shanono Usman, a local trader, told AFP, killing two.

Sale Adamu, a resident of Bokkos and also local leader of the Fulani community, confirmed the toll.