Gunmen have killed more than two dozen people in a night raid on Binper community in Bwai District of Mangu Local Government Area, Plateau State, in one of the deadliest episodes to hit the area in recent months.
The Mangu attack began around midnight on Monday and continued into the early hours of Tuesday, with heavily armed men moving from house to house and shooting residents as they slept. Survivors said the assailants forced their way into homes under cover of darkness, giving victims little chance to flee.
An eyewitness, Daniel Musa, said the attackers operated for hours before security forces reached the scene of the Mangu attack. He described houses set alight and families scattered as neighbours tried to account for missing relatives through the morning.
The Plateau State House of Assembly later confirmed the scale of the Mangu attack in a formal address to lawmakers, disclosing that over 25 people were killed in Bin-Per alone, while a separate assault on Jwak and Murish communities in Mangu Halle District left one more person dead. Lawmakers said no fewer than 38 houses were burnt across the affected settlements, alongside farmlands, grain barns and other property.
By Tuesday afternoon, twenty four victims of the Mangu attack had already been laid to rest in a mass burial attended by grieving relatives and community members. Some of the injured remained under treatment in hospital as the community continued counting its losses.
The Mwaghavul Youth Movement condemned the killings and criticised what it called a repeated failure of state security structures to protect residents in vulnerable communities. The group said casualties would likely have been higher had local youths not kept watch through the night, though it warned that community vigilance cannot be allowed to substitute for proper policing.
The organisation called on Plateau State Governor Caleb Mutfwang and President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to urgently reassess protection for communities in Mangu and to ensure a transparent investigation that leads to prosecutions. It also urged the deployment of a functional rapid response system capable of reaching distress calls before attackers can strike and withdraw.
Police spokesperson SP Alfred Alabo confirmed the attack but said officers were still carrying out operations and assessing the full extent of casualties in the area. The state’s newly appointed Commissioner of Police, CP Ayodeji Faniyan, travelled to the community alongside senior officers to review the damage and coordinate the response.
The latest bloodshed comes less than a week after three people died in a related flare up between Fulani and Mwaghavul residents in the same local government area, an episode that had already left both communities trading accusations of arson before the Mangu attack unfolded. Mangu has recorded repeated cycles of communal violence over the past two years, with previous raids leaving scores dead and thousands displaced from farmland they depended on for their livelihoods.
Community leaders in Mangu say the pattern of overnight raids followed by slow security response has become distressingly familiar, and they are pressing authorities to station a permanent, well equipped presence in the district rather than reacting after each attack. Elders who have lived through earlier waves of violence fear that without that shift, the Mangu attack will not be the last. For now, residents of Binper are focused on burying their dead, treating the wounded and searching for those still unaccounted for.
