Gunmen on Sunday (March 29) 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 children and wounding dozens of others, residents said.
“Armed gunmen invaded the area 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 dressed in military fatigues, leading witnesses to believe 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 no pain greater than a mother holding a child whose life has been taken too soon. Jos is not just bleeding it is crying through the hearts of its mothers,” Jalmet said. “Enough of the killings, enough of the silence. Every life lost is a future stolen, and every 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 in 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 cover of the night and kill defenseless citizens 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 is not only to cause harm but also trigger a spiral of reprisal attacks and further bloodletting.”
Plateau Gov. Caleb Manasseh Mutfwang condemned the attack as “barbaric and unprovoked” and assured residents that security agencies were mobilized to track 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 is not the pain of a few – it is 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 citizens that state and federal authorities were fully engaged and committed to ensuring justice.
Plateau State Police Command spokesperson Alfred Alabo said in a press statement on Monday (March 30) that the attack killed at least 10 men and two women and that officers were searching for 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 area 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 reduce tension and restore calm.
“Police and all other security agencies within the state have organized a joint operations and are currently combing the nearby bushes to ensure 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 track the perpetrators of this dastardly act and ensure that the law takes its course.”
The Commissioner of Police has deployed additional manpower and operational assets to the area led by the Deputy Commissioner of Police in charge of operations “to forestall further breakdown of law and order,” he said.
More Christians were killed in Nigeria than in any other country from Oct. 1, 2024 to Sept. 30, 2025, according to Open Doors’ 2026 World Watch List. Of the 4,849 Christians killed worldwide for their faith during that period, 3,490 – 72 percent – were Nigerians, an increase from 3,100 the prior year. Nigeria ranked No. 7 on the WWL list of the 50 countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian.
Numbering in the millions across Nigeria and the Sahel, predominantly Muslim Fulani comprise hundreds of clans of many different lineages who do not 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 strategy to Boko Haram and ISWAP and demonstrate a clear intent to target Christians and potent symbols of Christian identity,” the APPG report states.
Christian leaders in Nigeria have said they believe 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 are in the North-East and North-West, Islamic extremist Fulani militia attack farming communities, killing many hundreds, Christians above all, according to the report. Jihadist groups such as Boko Haram and the splinter group Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), among others, are also active in the country’s northern states, where federal government control is scant and Christians and their communities continue to be the targets of raids, sexual violence, and roadblock killings, according to the report. Abductions for ransom have increased considerably in recent years.
The violence has spread to southern states, and a new jihadist terror group, Lakurawa, has emerged in 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.
