Gunmen ambushed a group of miners at a mining site in Marit village, Barkin Ladi Local Government Area of Plateau State, at about 1 pm on Saturday, killing at least five people and wounding two others.
The Berom Youth Moulders Association’s national publicity secretary, Rwang Tengwong, confirmed the toll, saying the victims had been carrying out ordinary mining work when the attackers struck. “Our people are once again mourning the loss of lives to violence,” Tengwong said, describing the killings as a painful development and calling on security agencies to intensify protection for communities in the area.
Marit sits inside one of the most frequently targeted corridors in Plateau’s mining belt. The Eastern Update has gathered that the village and the neighboring community of Gashish were hit by a separate attack that killed six residents in their sleep earlier this year, prompting a mass burial and a public appeal from the local government chairman for tighter vigilance. Barkin Ladi’s mining sites in particular have drawn repeated assaults: gunmen killed five people at a site in Gana-Ropp village in an earlier incident, and a later attack on a mining camp in the area’s Ratoso Fan district left twelve dead and several others unaccounted for. Vigilantes on patrol in the local government area’s Gwol district have also been targeted directly, with three killed in a nighttime ambush.
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Simon Mundat, a member of the affected community, described Saturday’s attack as devastating. “We appeal to authorities to strengthen security in the area,” he said, adding that residents wanted to be able to carry out their ordinary work without fear of attack.
Security operatives and local hunters separately repelled a related assault on Friday, when suspected terrorists invaded Latok community in Qua’an-Pan Local Government Area, a different part of the state. Danat Noel, a resident of Latok, said the attackers were forced to retreat after security personnel and hunters mounted a swift response, preventing casualties in that incident.
Nigeria’s military has stationed a joint task force, Operation Enduring Peace, across Plateau specifically to respond to attacks of this kind, and the force’s leadership has in recent weeks pressed newly trained commanders to tighten coordination between the army and other security agencies operating in the state. Whether troops were deployed to Marit in response to Saturday’s attack was not confirmed as of filing.
Efforts to obtain an official response from state police were unsuccessful. The state’s Police Public Relations Officer, Alfred Alabo, did not answer repeated calls placed to him about the killing of the five miners, and ended the call on three separate occasions after being asked about the incident. He also did not respond to a WhatsApp message sent on the matter.
The lack of an official police statement leaves several details of Saturday’s attack unconfirmed, including whether any suspects have been identified or whether the gunmen were pursued after fleeing the mining site. Attacks on mining communities in Barkin Ladi have historically drawn slower official responses than assaults on residential areas, according to pattern reporting on the local government area’s recent security incidents, though the reasons for that gap have not been publicly explained by security agencies.
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Plateau’s mining sector, which draws artisanal workers to informal sites scattered across Barkin Ladi, Bassa, Wase and other local government areas, has become one of the state’s most exposed points of contact between armed groups and civilians. Community leaders in the area have for months called for a dedicated security presence at active mining locations rather than reactive deployments after attacks occur, a request that has not yet translated into a standing policy from either the state government or the federal task force overseeing the region.
Barkin Ladi’s local government chairman has in the past pledged to work with vigilante groups and security agencies to prevent further bloodshed following similar attacks, while acknowledging that the cycle of violence in the area has continued despite those efforts. No fresh statement from the chairman’s office had been issued on Saturday’s killings as of the time of filing.
State authorities have periodically linked the recurring violence in Barkin Ladi’s mining belt to disputes over land and mineral rights, though officials investigating individual attacks have more often cited unidentified armed groups without publicly establishing a specific motive. Past incidents in the area have combined night raids on sleeping residents with daylight assaults on active mining and farming sites, a pattern security analysts tracking the region say complicates efforts to concentrate patrols at any single type of location. The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps and the state police command have both maintained a presence in parts of Barkin Ladi, but community leaders say coverage has not kept pace with the frequency of attacks on remote mining camps that sit some distance from the nearest police division.
Plateau’s government has repeatedly framed banditry and communal violence in the state as interconnected problems requiring both military pressure and longer-term reconciliation work between communities, a position echoed publicly by military commanders overseeing security operations in the state. Mining families in Barkin Ladi have buried victims of gun violence at sites in the local government area on multiple occasions already this year, including at Gana-Ropp and Ratoso Fan, before Saturday’s attack in Marit.
