Nigeria Attack Leaves More Than 160 Dead

The raiders stormed a rural community in central Nigeria, killing dozens and setting homes on fire in one of the country’s worst recent attacks.

At least 167 people have been killed by gunmen in attacks on two villages in a rural part of Nigeria, according to the Nigerian branch of the Red Cross.

The attack was one of the deadliest in recent years in a country racked by violence, including terrorism, kidnappings for ransom, and insurgency.

The particulars of the assault on the villages of Woro and Nuku, in the central-western state of Kwara, are still being pieced together by officials, aid workers and residents. No group has claimed responsibility for it. The Kwara state government, in a post on social media, confirmed the attack but did not provide details about the assailants or the death toll, including the victims’ religion.

Nigeria has recently been under intense scrutiny from Washington over the killings of Christians, following a campaign by American conservatives, celebrities and Republican lawmakers seeking American intervention in Africa’s most populous country.

On Christmas Day, the U.S. military bombed a northwestern state in Nigeria where President Trump said Islamic State terrorists had been “targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians.” And on Tuesday, the head of U.S. Africa Command said the United States had sent a small team of military officers to Nigeria.

Though there is no reliable data breaking down the number of killings in Nigeria by religion, most analysts say that the insecurity and chronic impunity puts both Christian and Muslim lives in danger. And Kwara State is home to many Muslims and Christians.

Some analysts and residents said the gunmen were likely members of a faction of Boko Haram, the terrorist group that has destabilized Nigeria’s northeast.

A Red Cross official in Kwara State, Babaomo Ayodeji, said that the search for bodies was still underway, and that “the death toll has risen to 167.”

A police spokeswoman said security agencies were still gathering information, and could not yet confirm how many people had been killed.

“Many houses were burned,” said the spokeswoman, Adetoun Ejire-Adeyemi. “The exact number of casualties is yet to be confirmed, but many people were injured.”

One resident of Woro, Muhammad Kazeem, said he had been on his way home from work when the attack took place. As he hid, he said, the attackers carried out executions and set fire to homes, shops and the palace of the emir, a local king.

Only when the gunmen had gone did he emerge from hiding, Mr. Kazeem said. Then he and other men from the community began to gather the dead.

“At around 9 p.m., we counted between 35 and 40 bodies,” Mr. Kazeem said.

The governor of Kwara State, Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq, said in a statement that the attack was “a cowardly expression of frustration by terrorist cells following the ongoing counterterrorism campaigns in parts of the state.”

In recent years, bandits and jihadist groups have moved into a national park in the state, levying taxes on farming and fishing communities and kidnapping people.

Nearby communities have been rocked by killings and kidnappings, including the abduction — and later release — of 253 children from a Catholic boarding school last November. But the scale of the killings in Tuesday’s attack is unheard-of in the area, analysts said.

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