Police initially counted ten victims. Two days later, the people of Binnari in Taraba State believe they have buried five times as many, and some families are still searching the bush for relatives who never came home.
Friday prayers had just ended when the shooting started in the Karim Lamido district. According to a local leader quoted by a news agency, the raiders arrived on around 50 motorbikes, each carrying a pair of armed men. Over several hours they fired at residents, emptied shops of cash and food, took motorbikes left behind by people running away and set homes on fire.
Officers who answered the distress call found the gunmen gone. Police spokesman Victor Mshelizah confirmed ten victims with gunshot wounds and said soldiers, mobile police and tactical units had been sent in. Local accounts now describe a far grimmer picture: 27 more bodies recovered in the surrounding scrubland and another 13, mostly children, in and near a river, where some apparently drowned while fleeing. Amnesty International put the figure at no fewer than 40, saying some victims were burnt beyond recognition.
Villagers say the attackers came across the border from neighbouring Plateau State and that Binnari has now been hit three times. A local stakeholder blamed the lack of passable roads, which leaves troops struggling to reach the area, while the head of a hunters’ group asked the state to arm volunteers better.
Amnesty wants an impartial inquiry and says the state keeps failing to shield villages from repeat attacks, adding that statements of condemnation are not enough. Although Taraba is grouped with the insurgency-hit northeast, its deadliest threats tend to come from bandit gangs and clashes between farmers and herders.
