Baku-APA. Nigeria's police authority in central north state of Plateau on Tuesday confirmed 16 persons dead in an attack on Shonong community, consisting of four villages in the restive state, APA reports quoting XInhua.
Nine dead bodies were recovered from the scene of Monday's attack while seven others were burnt beyond recognition, the state commissioner of police, Chris Olakpe, told reporters in Jos, the state capital.
About 20 houses were razed down, he said, adding that the number of persons injured in the attack was still being collated.
He said the attack would have been more devastating if not for the prompt intervention of the combined efforts of the police and men of the Special Task Force (STF) who repelled it.
He said no arrest had been made but assured that the police had spread its dragnet on Kaduna axis to ensure that the criminals were arrested.
The commissioner assured that the state command was collaborating with the Kaduna State Police Command to arrest the attackers.
The command is devising new strategies to check the spate of attacks in rural communities in Plateau, according to the official.
The police chief appealed to the people to report to any security agent any suspicious characters within their communities.
Security sources had told reporters in the state that the attackers stormed Shonong at about 7 a.m. local time on Monday shooting sporadically and killed about 30 people.
In Jos, the settlers are almost entirely Muslims and the indigenous people are predominantly Christians. Struggle over land ownership, economic resources and political control tends to be expressed not just in ethnic but also religious terms.
Thousands have been killed and hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced internally, just as billions of dollars of property have been destroyed due to the crisis.
Since the end of 2010, security has further deteriorated in the state because of terror attacks and suicide bombings against churches and security targets by Boko Haram, a group mostly responsible for waves of attacks in the northern part of Nigeria.
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