Armed groups kill scores of villagers in Nigeria’s north-cen-tral Plateau state in the long-running conflict between noma-dic herders and farmers.
At least 140 people were killed and others are missing after a series of attacks by gunmen on remote villages in north-central Nigeria’s Plateau state.
Officials and survivors con-firmed the Christmas Eve attacks and blamed the killings on the farmer-herder crisis in the West African nation.
They said the military gangs, locally called “bandits,” launched “well-coordinated” attacks in “not fewer than 20 different commu-nities” and torched houses on Saturday and Sunday. Gunfire was still heard on Monday morning. Plateau Governor, Caleb Mutf-wang, said that in Mangu local governorate alone, 15 people were buried on Monday, and authorities in Bokkos had counted not less than 100 corpses.
“I am yet to take stock of (the deaths in) Barkin Ladi,” Mutfwan said, adding, “It has been a very terrifying Christmas for us here in Plateau.”
More than 300 wounded people have reportedly been taken to hos-pitals.
Amnesty International’s Nige-ria office told The Associated Press that it has so far confirmed 140 deaths in the Christian-majority Bokkos and Barkin-Ladi areas of Plateau, based on data compiled by its workers on the ground and from local officials.
There are fears of a higher death toll as some people remain unaccounted for.
Some witnesses said it took more than 12 hours before security agencies responded to their call for help.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, though blame fell on herders from the Fulani tribe, who have been accused of carrying out such mass killings across the northwest and central regions.
The bandit militias operate from bases deep in forests and raid villages to loot and kidnap residents for ransom.

In his annual Christmas address to members of the Roman Curia, Pope Francis urged the Church’s governing bureaucracy to be open to change and to resist “rigid ideological positions” that prevent them from moving forward.
Speaking to members of the curia during a Dec. 21 audience, Pope Francis stressed the need to “remain vigilant against rigid ideological positions that often, under the guise of good intentions, separate us from reality and prevent us from moving forward.”
“We are called, instead, to set out and journey, like the Magi, following the light that always desires to lead us on, at times along unexplored paths and new roads,” he said.
Referring to something he said was once told to him by a “zealous priest,” the pope said “it is not easy to rekindle the embers under the ashes of the Church. Today we strive to kindle passion in those who have long since lost it.”
“Sixty years after the Council, we are still debating the division between ‘progressives’ and ‘conservatives,’ while the real difference is between lovers and those who have lost that initial passion,” he said.
In this year’s speech, Francis told the curia to imitate God’s style of closeness, compassion, and tenderness, and to embark on a path of faith marked by an ability to listen and discern, and an openness to journey.

In his first major media appearance since being convicted of financial crimes by a Vatican tribunal and sentenced to five and a half years in prison, Cardinal Angelo Becciu told an Italian TV host Monday that “I want to shout to the world that I’m innocent.”
“I’m going to do everything I can, everything to demonstrate my innocence through the legal system and in every way possible,” Becciu said, speaking on the program Cinque Minuti (“Five Minutes”), hosted by Bruno Vespa, one of the country’s most renowned television journalists.
“I want to shout to the world that I’m innocent,” Becciu said. “I absolutely did not commit any of the crimes of which I’ve been accused.”
With regard to the complex London property deal at the heart of the recent Vatican trial, Becciu appeared to suggest that primary responsibility rested with Italian Monsignor Alberto Perlasca, who headed an administrative office within the Secretariat of State that oversaw the London operation but who escaped indictment by becoming a witness for the prosecution instead.
“I wasn’t the one who made the decision. As substitute, do you know how many offices I had to follow? There are 17. I didn’t have the time to follow economic and financial matters step by step,” Becciu said.

In the long-awaited denouement of the Vatican’s “trial of the century,” which has been seen widely as a litmus test of Pope Francis’s press for reform, a Vatican tribunal on December 16 sentenced Italian Cardinal Angelo Becciu to five years and six months in prison for his role in various financial crimes.
Becciu was also fined roughly $8,700 and permanently barred from holding any public office in the Vatican City State. An attorney representing Becciu immediately indicated plans for an appeal.
Becciu, 75, was already the first cardinal ever to stand trial on criminal charges before a Vatican civil court, and he now becomes the first ever to be convicted and sentenced. Prosecutors had asked for seven years and three months of prison time for the cardinal.
From 2011 to 2018 Becciu held the all-important position of sostituto, or “substitute,” in the Secretariat of State, making him effectively the pope’s chief of staff, the only figure in the Vatican system with the right to see the pope on a routine basis without an appointment.
Presiding judge Giuseppe Pignatone, a veteran Italian jurist, read the verdicts aloud on Decemebr 16 in a hall belonging to the Vatican Museums which was converted into a makeshift courtroom in order to accommodate not only public interest, but the sheer number of attorneys and support personnel necessary to try such a complex case.
Stretching over two and a half years, the trial featured 86 separate hearings and heard almost 70 witnesses, after what amounted to almost a year of procedural squabbles before the court ever got to the substance of the charges.