They Opened the Doors of People Who Were Sleeping. Binper Buried Twenty Four Before Dark.
Armed men went house to house through a sleeping village in Mangu. Four different tolls were in circulation before the grave was closed.
Mathew Joseph heard the neighbours first. Noises, then screaming, somewhere out in the dark. He went to the window and saw armed men walking toward his house. He got his family out before they reached the door.
He told AFP that twenty four people were killed. Muftwan Yamput, who lives in the same village, gave the same figure and added a detail from his own street. "We survived by the whisker," he said, "but my neighbours were attacked, two people killed in their house."
The village is Binper, in Ruff, in the Kombun District of Mangu Local Government Area, Plateau State. The men came Monday night and were still working in the early hours of Tuesday, August 18. They carried guns and machetes. Residents say they went house to house, opened the doors on people who were asleep, and killed them where they lay. Homes were burned. Farmland was destroyed. By first light some of the missing were still missing.
By Tuesday evening the village had dug one grave and put twenty four people in it.
