Plateau State has endured a season of sustained bloodshed this year, with Christian residents and local associations increasingly describing the violence as coordinated rather than isolated. Data compiled by the Berom Youth Moulders Association shows that at least 121 people were killed between May and July 11, 2026, in communities across Barkin Ladi, Riyom, Bassa, Jos South, Pankshin, and other local government areas. The association recorded 62 deaths in May, followed by 43 in June. Another 16 people were killed during the first 11 days of July.
The Youth Moulders have repeatedly characterized the strikes as a “fresh wave of coordinated attacks,” pointing to near-simultaneous raids on multiple communities on the same night and reports of armed groups camped across the state ahead of scheduled assaults.
The most recent mass killing struck Kum, a village in Riyom Local Government Area. Attackers stormed the community around 11:30 p.m. on July 11, continuing into the early hours of July 12, killing nine members of a single family, including a three-month-old infant, and critically injuring community head Pam Yohanna. Residents told reporters the attackers had spent the day blending in as herders before striking at night. Troops of Sector 6, Operation Enduring Peace, arrested four suspects on July 12 in a follow-up raid on Fulani hamlets in neighboring Barkin Ladi LGA.
Residents in Kum reported drones over the community during the attack. Kum community leader Chollom Dung said, “We don’t know who flies them.”
The Kum attackers came from Fass and Rankum, a Berom village in Jol Ward, Riyom LGA, seized by armed Fulani militias in 2001 and renamed Mahanga, according to reporting on the occupation. The Plateau State Government said in 2025 that at least 64 communities in Bokkos, Barkin Ladi, and Riyom local government areas had been forcibly displaced and taken over by criminal groups, part of a wider pattern in which 151 villages across five local government areas have been annexed or occupied since 2001, according to a coalition of Plateau indigenous youth associations.
The same pattern has continued in Jol, a Christian village of approximately 1,200 people in Riyom LGA, roughly ten kilometers from Kum. Mr. Gankis Emmanuel Dalyop, 47, youth leader of Jol Ward, described the assault on his community.
“From Tuesday to date, we have been experiencing attacks,” he said. “We have not rested.” The raids ran roughly July 14 to 17, 2026.
Dalyop said attackers travel from Rankum (Mahanga), Fass, Loton, and several other local communities where residents were driven out and which attackers now use as staging points.
Mahanga sits roughly three to four kilometers from Jol. Attackers typically travel by motorcycle, Dalyop said, before leaving the bikes near a river and continuing on foot. “They come in large numbers,” he said. “They can reach 200 to 400 people.”
Attackers arrive armed with what Dalyop called “sophisticated weapons,” a term commonly used in the area to distinguish military-grade arms such as AK-47 rifles from the primitive or homemade muskets and hunting shotguns typically available to the Christian farming communities they attack.
He said the pattern has changed from prior years. “This year is very, very different,” he said. “In years past they came with their cows and destroyed our crops. Now they come on foot without the cows.” He took the shift as a sign attackers intend to drive the remaining population out permanently.
Attacks ran between 4 p.m. and 11 p.m., Dalyop said, with attackers approaching on footpaths through the valleys after abandoning motorcycles at the river crossing. Dalyop said he believes attackers use aerial surveillance, though he could not say for certain whether the drones observed belong to the attackers or to government security forces already operating in the area.
When attacks begin, villagers contact security personnel, Dalyop said, and local vigilantes stationed at observation points provide early warning by monitoring approach routes. Security forces have on occasion remained overnight in the village, he said, but attackers retreat into surrounding valleys when personnel approach, making engagement difficult.
Dalyop dated the underlying land conflict to about 25 years, centered on control of territory. “Our land is vital,” he said. “Out of 100 percent of our land, we are using only about 2 percent now.” He said several Fulani settlements surround Jol but do not attack one another. “The Fulanis do not attack themselves,” he said. “They only attack us.”
Asked how residents identify attackers as Fulani, Dalyop said the community has lived alongside Fulani neighbors for years and recognizes them on sight. Some privately pass along information ahead of attacks, he said, but stop short of naming individuals, fearing that if they “leak something,” their own neighbors would retaliate.
In April 2026, suspected terrorist elements reportedly from the Rankum (Mahanga) area attacked Jol, killing 51-year-old Dalyop Betobeje — an earlier instance of the same attack corridor Dalyop described.
The post Nigerian Christians Report Increasing Coordination Across Fulani Attack appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.