Gunmen in Nigeria kill 28 people in predominantly Christian area

Gunmen on Sunday reportedly killed 28 people in a densely populated, predominantly Christian area of Jos, Plateau state, Nigeria, sources said.

Residents of the Angwan Rukuba area of Jos said the attack occurred at about 8 p.m. on Palm Sunday where residents have various bustling business outlets. The assailants arrived in a van and on motorcycles, killing men, women and kids and wounding dozens of others, residents said.

“Armed gunmen invaded the world at about 8 p.m. and shot indiscriminately at anyone they sighted,” area resident Samson Glabe told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News.

Arin Izere, a Jos-based gospel singer, said the assailants were wearing military fatigues, leading witnesses to imagine they were task force officers with the National Drug Enforcement Agency.

“I went to drop my friend at Angwan Rukuba, and at that moment we saw the terrorists coming down from their vehicle with guns,” Izere told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News. “The vehicle is a Sharon bus painted in red color. Within seconds from alighting from their vehicle, we heard gunshots, they were shooting at anyone in sight. Many have been killed, and I feel so heartbroken.”

Resident Debra Jalmet in a text message called for an end to the bloodshed.

“There is not any pain greater than a mother holding a baby whose life has been taken too soon. Jos isn’t just bleeding it’s crying through the hearts of its moms,” Jalmet said. “Enough of the killings, enough of the silence. Every life lost is a future stolen, and each tear shed is a wound on our humanity.”

A Plateau state spokesperson, Joyce Lohya Ramnap, confirmed the attack, describing it as despicable and unwarranted. She said it happened within the Gari Ya Waye community of Angwan Rukuba, and that officials had imposed a 48-hour curfew across Jos North Local Government Area.

Both the president of Nigeria and the Plateau state governor condemned the attack.

“Anyone who will sneak under the duvet of the night and kill defenseless residents as done in Jos is a heartless coward,” said President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in a press statement. “By attacking soft targets in Jos, their objective isn’t only to cause harm but additionally trigger a spiral of reprisal attacks and further bloodletting.”

Plateau Gov. Caleb Manasseh Mutfwang condemned the attack as “barbaric and unprovoked” and warranted residents that security agencies were mobilized to trace down the culprits.

“This is a painful moment for all of us,” Mutfwang said. “Angwan Rukuba is a community that accommodates people from diverse ethnic backgrounds across Plateau state. Therefore, this isn’t the pain of a number of – it’s the pain of all of us.”

He said a suspect linked to prior threats had been arrested and that efforts were underway to apprehend the perpetrators, and he assured residents that state and federal authorities were fully engaged and committed to making sure justice.

Plateau State Police Command spokesperson Alfred Alabo said in a press statement on Monday (March 30) that the attack killed no less than 10 men and two women and that officers were trying to find the assailants, but that bodies were still being discovered.

“As of this morning, additional two corpses were found while our men were combing the bushes and trailing the suspects for possible arrests,” Alabo said.

He said police received a call reporting gunshots in the world at about 8:30 p.m. on Sunday, and that Police Plateau State Command sent a team of officers comprising members of the its Management Team, PMF Squadron Commanders, and others to cut back tension and restore calm.

“Police and all other security agencies throughout the state have organized a joint operations and are currently combing the nearby bushes to be certain that the suspects are arrested or dislodged in accordance with the law,” Alabo said. “While the identities of the victims are still being verified, the CP assures families of the deceased that investigations are underway to trace the perpetrators of this dastardly act and be certain that the law takes its course.”

The Commissioner of Police has deployed additional manpower and operational assets to the world led by the Deputy Commissioner of Police accountable for operations “to forestall further breakdown of law and order,” he said.

More Christians were killed in Nigeria than in some other country from Oct. 1, 2024 to Sept. 30, 2025, in response to Open Doors’ 2026 World Watch List. Of the 4,849 Christians killed worldwide for his or her faith during that period, 3,490 – 72 percent – were Nigerians, a rise from 3,100 the prior 12 months. Nigeria ranked No. 7 on the WWL list of the 50 countries where it’s most difficult to be a Christian.

Numbering within the thousands and thousands across Nigeria and the Sahel, predominantly Muslim Fulani comprise tons of of clans of many various lineages who don’t 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 technique to Boko Haram and ISWAP and exhibit a transparent intent to focus on Christians and potent symbols of Christian identity,” the APPG report states.

Christian leaders in Nigeria have said they imagine 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’re within the North-East and North-West, Islamic extremist Fulani militia attack farming communities, killing many tons of, Christians above all, in response to the report. Jihadist groups reminiscent of Boko Haram and the splinter group Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), amongst others, are also energetic within the country’s northern states, where federal government control is scant and Christians and their communities proceed to be the targets of raids, sexual violence, and roadblock killings, in response to the report. Abductions for ransom have increased considerably in recent times.

The violence has spread to southern states, and a recent jihadist terror group, Lakurawa, has emerged within 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.

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