Over 200 Christians were massacred by Islamic extremists in Nigeria's troubled Benue state last Friday evening.
The militants targeted families displaced by radicalized Fulani herdsmen. These families were housed in buildings repurposed as temporary accommodations in the market square of Yelewata in the Guma Local Government Area, according to a report by Aid to the Church in Need on Monday.
The attackers torched buildings while people were sleeping and attacked anyone attempting to flee with machetes, shouting “Allahu Akhbar.” . Local pastors told the charity that police had earlier repelled attackers who tried to storm St. Joseph’s Church, which houses over 700 internally displaced persons.
At the market square, sources allege that the militants used fuel to set fire to the doors of the displacement facilities, then opened fire as more than 500 people slept nearby.
Amnesty International Nigeria reported Saturday that at least 100 people were killed in the attack that happened between late Friday and the early hours of Saturday, noting that hundreds were injured without proper medical care and dozens are missing.
However, data collected by the Diocese of Makurdi’s Foundation for Justice, Development and Peace estimates the death toll was closer to 200.
“The death toll makes it the single worst atrocity in the region, where there have been a sudden upsurge in attacks and increasing signs that a concerted militant assault is underway to force an entire community to leave,” the ACN report states.
Thousands displaced in Yelewata are victims of Fulani attacks on communities across Benue state, with many fleeing to nearby towns and villages, according to the charity. In Makurdi’s Gwer West Local Government Area, attacks that began over three weeks ago have killed 100 people and displaced more than 5,000.
Pope Leo XIV condemned the attack in his Sunday Angelus message, saying he is praying for those killed in “a terrible massacre,” most of whom were “sheltered by the local Catholic mission,” and for “rural Christian communities of the Benue State who have been relentless victims of violence.”
Advocates have long called for increased international awareness of the rising trend of what they describe as genocide-like attacks on predominantly Christian farming communities in Nigeria’s Middle Belt states, carried out by radicalized herders.
According to a January report from the persecution watchdog group Global Christian Relief, nearly 10,000 Christians were killed by Islamic extremists in Nigeria between November 2022 and November 2024.
Church leaders have voiced concern that ‘a plan is underway to seize land and ethnically cleanse the region of its Christian presence,’ according to the United Kingdom’s All-Party Parliamentary Group for International Freedom or Belief.
