Villagers scrub streaks of blood from the walls of brick huts and barns. Others still search through torched sacks of crops, clothes and scattered belongings, to salvage what they can, weeks after a massacre.
Last month, dozens of attackers stormed the farming village of Yelwata in Benue state — Nigeria's fertile "breadbasket" — killing at least 160 people. Armed with rifles, machetes and fuel, they struck as families slept. The assault, one of the deadliest in recent memory, sparked outrage from religious leaders and lawmakers around the world.
The massacre unfolded in the country's volatile Middle Belt, where Christian farming communities like Yelwata sit on fertile land—and at the fault lines of Nigeria's deepening farmer-herder crisis.
Once contained to local disputes resolved between communities, the violence has exploded into mass killings fueled by population growth, the climate crisis, and the collapse of traditional peacemaking.