The toll from a series of attacks on villages in Plateau state, central Nigeria, from Saturday night to Tuesday morning, grew even heavier on Wednesday, reaching nearly 200 dead, authorities said.

They did not clarify who the perpetrators were. There have been many tensions in the region in recent years, some of which have religious dimensions. The attacks took place in the middle of Christmas.

The chairman of Boko’s governing council, Manday Kasa, said he had counted “148 villagers (…) who were butchered in cold blood” during a meeting with Nigeria’s Vice President Kassim Sitema, adding “at least fifty dead”. in neighboring Barkin Land, according to Dixon Cholom, an elected member of the local parliament.

A previous count referred to 163 dead.

“We ask you to resist the temptation to succumb to divisions and poisonous rhetoric of hatred against your fellow citizens as we strive to deliver justice and guarantee your safety,” Vice President Sitema told a delegation of local authorities and displaced people yesterday.

“No less than 20 villages” were attacked from Saturday night to Monday morning, Mandey Casa said, stressing that they were “coordinated”.

He also spoke of “500 wounded and thousands displaced”.

Many victims were buried yesterday Tuesday. It was “150 people,” said Timothy Nuwan, vice president of the Nigerian church organization COCIN.

“Many people were murdered, they killed people as if they were animals, in cold blood, some inside their houses, others outside. Today (ie the day before yesterday) we buried around 150 (victims) throughout the region,” he said.

Lt. Gen. Abdusalami Abubakar, who was present at one of the funerals at a mass grave in Mayyanga village, Bokos, acknowledged that the security forces were struggling to deal with the situation.

“By four in the morning (on Christmas Eve), we had received 36 calls. We couldn’t handle (all of them). Things could be worse, much worse,” the senior officer told villagers.

The day before yesterday, Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu ordered the security forces to “immediately intervene” in the area, find and “arrest the perpetrators”, after he “strongly condemned the attacks”, according to a press release from his services.

Plateau State Governor Caleb Muftwang also called for the arrest of “those responsible for these heinous acts” yesterday.

The people of north-west and central Nigeria have for years been severely tested by jihadist groups, armed gangs of thugs who loot, kidnap for ransom and kill, as well as attacks and reprisals between herdsmen and farmers competing for increasingly scarce resources, the land and water.

The multidimensional security and humanitarian crisis is exacerbated by climate change and the population explosion in the country of 215 million inhabitants.

Nigeria’s President Tinubu, who took office in May, says, like his predecessor, that tackling insecurity is his priority.