Source: www.morningstarnews.org
Date: October 5, 2026
Night raids on villages in Plateau state continue.
By Christian Daily International-Morning Star News
Central Mosque in Jos, Plateau state, Nigeria. (El-siddeeq lame, Creative Commons)
ABUJA, Nigeria (Christian Daily International-Morning Star News) – Fulani gunmen killed two Christians and wounded three others on Sunday night (Oct. 4) in an attack in Bokkos County, Plateau State, central Nigeria, sources said.
Area resident Aaron Nyam said “Fulani terrorists” raided predominantly Christian Angwan Tsarki village at about 10 p.m. as villagers slept.
“They killed two Christians and injured three other Christians,” Nyam told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News. “This incident is part of the ongoing series of attacks against Christians in this area.”
Another resident, Daniel Dodo, concurred that Fulani herdsmen armed with deadly weapons killed two Christians and shot and wounded three others.
“The injured are being treated at a hospital in Bokkos town currently,” he said.
More Christians were killed in Nigeria than in any other country from Oct. 1, 2024 to Sept. 30, 2025, according to Open Doors’ 2026 World Watch List. Of the 4,849 Christians killed worldwide for their faith during that period, 3,490 – 72 percent – were Nigerians, an increase from 3,100 the prior year. Nigeria ranked No. 7 on the WWL list of the 50 countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian.
Numbering in the millions across Nigeria and the Sahel, predominantly Muslim Fulani comprise hundreds of clans of many different lineages who do not hold extremist views, but some Fulani do adhere to radical Islamist ideology, the United Kingdom’s All-Party Parliamentary Group for International Freedom or Belief (APPG) noted in a 2020 report.
“They adopt a comparable strategy to Boko Haram and ISWAP and demonstrate a clear intent to target Christians and potent symbols of Christian identity,” the APPG report states.
Christian leaders in Nigeria have said they believe herdsmen attacks on Christian communities in Nigeria’s Middle Belt are inspired by their desire to forcefully take over Christians’ lands and impose Islam as desertification has made it difficult for them to sustain their herds.
In the country’s North-Central zone, where Christians are more common than they are in the North-East and North-West, Islamic extremist Fulani militia attack farming communities, killing many hundreds, Christians above all, according to the report. Jihadist groups such as Boko Haram and the splinter group Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), among others, are also active in the country’s northern states, where federal government control is scant and Christians and their communities continue to be the targets of raids, sexual violence, and roadblock killings, according to the report. Abductions for ransom have increased considerably in recent years.
The violence has spread to southern states, and a new jihadist terror group, Lakurawa, has emerged in the northwest, armed with advanced weaponry and a radical Islamist agenda, the WWL noted. Lakurawa is affiliated with the expansionist Al-Qaeda insurgency Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin, or JNIM, originating in Mali.