Buhari urges calm as ‘clashes’ kill 86

Africa

BAUCHI, Nigeria, June 25, (Agencies): Nigeria’s president called for calm on Sunday after at least 86 people died in clashes between farmers and semi-nomadic herders over the weekend.

Authorities imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew in central Plateau state after the fighting, part of an escalation of clashes that have raged for years, often over dwindling fertile land.

A total of 86 people had died by late Sunday, state police spokesman Terna Tyopev said, raising the local government’s earlier estimate of 70.

The violence in Nigeria’s diverse Middle Belt states has now killed more people than the Islamist insurgency in Nigeria’s northeast, according to Reuters calculations.

32 Fulani civilians killed:

At least 32 civilians were killed and 10 are missing following an attack in central Mali, believed to have been carried out by traditional hunters, local officials said Sunday, as the government said 16 bodies had been found.

Armed Dozo hunters, linked to the Dogon ethnic group, were suspected of ambushing the isolated village of Koumaga in the Mopti region on Saturday, killing dozens of Fulani herders, including children.

“They surrounded the village, separated the Fulani people from the others and killed at least 32 civilians in cold blood,” said Abdoul Aziz Diallo, president of the local Tabital Pulaaku association, adding that 10 others were missing.

Zimbabwe blast kills 1:

One person died on Monday from injuries after an explosion rocked Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s Saturday campaign rally in the city of Bulawayo, state-owned radio said.

Mnangagwa escaped unhurt and police have said they were searching for a motive for the blast that injured 49 people.

This was Mnangagwa’s first rally in the opposition stronghold of Bulawayo, as the 75-year-old leader seeks votes ahead of the July 30 presidential and parliamentary vote, the first since Robert Mugabe was forced to resign after a de facto coup in November.

A ruling ZANU-PF party official said the victim was a member of the Presidential Guard, an army unit that provides close security to Mnangagwa and his two deputies.