Attack on Nigerian town kills hundreds
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Summary

March 7, 2010: Roving bands of killers have attacked villages north of Lagos in Nigeria, murdering between 200 and 500 people this weekend. Most of those killed were Christians, and slain by Muslims in a wave of religious violence. The majority of the murdered people were hacked apart with machetes. The attacks started at 3 in the morning.

In January of 2010, at least 150 Muslims were murdered and their town burned down. The article does not speculate whether or not the more recent attack was some sort of vengeance over the earlier mass-murder.

Religious tensions are high in the region, and have been at least since 2008, when a riot over religion and election tampering lead to 800 violent deaths.

Source

Game and Story Use

  • PCs engaging in some globe-hopping during a modern military campaign or pulp adventure might run across such a tragedy, or it's aftermath. If the party doesn't post a guard at night, they could be in a lot of danger.
    • If the PCs are special forces, peacekeepers, or mercenaries, they may be flown in to stop a murderous rampage currently in progress.
    • Typically peacekeepers will just have to stand there and watch as they are frequently neither equipped nor permitted to intervene. Should probably be a roleplaying challenge - most soldiers who find themselves in that situation are never quite the same again.
  • Similar mass-murdering sprees could happen in gaming, especially in a fantasy setting where opposed groups are of different species as well as having cultural or religious animosity.
    • A bitter cycle of revenge could destabilize a region for hundreds of years.
  • An event like this may be a cover story in your campaign, to protect and hide the truth about a zombie outbreak or the early stages of a zombie apocalypse. The machetes may be because you have to dismember the corpses, or may be a cover to explain all the people the zombies tore apart.
  • In a Cthulhu Mythos game, the reports about religious affiliation would prove wrong, and the killings would be part of some grotesque human sacrifice intended to raise an eldritch abomination.
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