In yet another brutal assault marking the ongoing Christian genocide in Africa’s Middle Belt, armed Fulani Islamic militants stormed the village of Yelewata in Nigeria’s central Benue state over the weekend, killing at least 100 people. The attack began late on Friday and extended into the early hours of Saturday. According to Amnesty International, many families were locked inside their homes and burned alive as the assailants set entire households on fire. Dozens remain missing, and hundreds have been left injured without access to medical care.
Benue State lies in Nigeria’s volatile Middle Belt, where the predominantly Muslim North meets the largely Christian South, a longstanding flashpoint of unilateral attack by the foreign funded Islamist groups. Fulani herders, often driven by jihadist ideologies, have increasingly migrated southward in search of land and resources, clashing violently with settled Christian farming communities.
This massacre is the latest in a long series of systematic assaults by Fulani jihadists, Boko Haram, and ISWAP against Christian communities in central Nigeria. These jihadist groups have been blamed for large-scale violence aimed at displacing indigenous Christian populations and seizing control of fertile land.
The Recent Islamic Terrorist Attack on Christians
The Yelewata massacre follows a grim sequence of similar atrocities in recent weeks. On June 1, 2025, Fulani Jihadists launched deadly raids on Gwer West and Apa counties in Benue State, killing at least 43 Christians. These assaults were swiftly followed by further bloodshed between June 1 and 2, when nearly 40 Christians were killed in a series of coordinated attacks across Plateau State..Just days earlier, between May 24 and 25, 2025, at least 50 civilians, mostly Christians, were brutally butchered in Munga Lelau and Munga Dasso, two farming villages in Karim-Lamido county, Taraba State. These incidents demonstrate the militants’ expanding reach across the region.
In April 2025, violence flared again in Plateau State, where at least 40 Christians were massacred. That same month, during the sacred Easter Triduum from April 18 to 20, jihadist groups carried out one of the deadliest offensives yet, killing over 179 Christians in coordinated attacks across several villages in the Middle Belt. Earlier in May 2025, the Gwer West region of Benue State was once again targeted by Fulani Islamic gunmen, who killed at least 20 people, adding to the already staggering toll in the area.
A Relentless Genocide- 45,000 Christians Killed, Millions Displaced
According to SBM Intelligence, over 500 people have been killed in similar attacks in Benue since 2019 alone. These violent incursions have displaced more than 2.2 million Christians, many of whom now live in squalid camps lacking food, healthcare, or education. Genocide Watch reports that more than 45,000 Christians have been killed between 2009 and March 2022 by Islamic jihadist groups, including Fulani militants, Boko Haram, and ISWAP.
These relentless attacks, most of them targeting Christian populations, form a clear pattern of religiously motivated violence that many observers now describe as an ongoing genocide. Despite the growing death toll and displacement crisis, there remains a glaring absence of effective intervention from either national or international authorities.
