Tens of individuals have been gunned down in a rampage shooting spree on two villages in the western state of Kwara after they declined to give in to “extremists who preached an unfamiliar doctrine,” the state governor said.

Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq said on X that “75 local Muslims had been massacred” in the raid on Tuesday, and a state legislator was quoted by the BBC as saying that 78 people already had been buried and that 170 were the most that could be estimated as the number of dead bodies was still being found.

President Bola Tinubu sent an army battalion to the region where the killings took place, blaming them on the Islamist militant group, Boko Haram.

The attack was among the many that had been experienced in Nigeria over the past few days.

Besides the murders in the two villages of Woro and Nuku, 38 individuals were abducted, and other people fled, and shops and homes were burnt down, according to Saidu Baba Ahmed, a member of the state house of assembly, Kwara.

Two sons of the local traditional leader were also among the dead, along with family members kidnapped, according to local resident Abdulla Umar Usman.

He informed the BBC that the attack started after 17:00 local time and took three to four hours.

According to Ahmed, the activity of Boko Haram has been rising steadily in the region, and the attack was initiated by the rejection of a rigid interpretation of Islam.

He added that the Islamist group had sent a letter to the community informing them that they had come to preach, but the residents opposed and sent local security.

Information concerning the specific number of deaths in the remote area is difficult to verify.

Babaomo Ayodeji, a Red Cross official in the Kwara state, informed AFP that it was reported that the death toll had reached 162, as the search was still ongoing to find more bodies.

In a statement of Amnesty International, more than 170 people were killed, many of whom were shot at close range, and some were burned alive.

The human rights group demanded an investigation and remarked that there was an eye-opener of a lack of any form of security to save lives.

Within recent months, there has been the continued activity of jihadists, who are suspected to be affiliated with a Boko Haram splinter faction, conducting targeted killings, where they regularly arrive on motorcycles and assault markets and vigilante groupings established to secure the safety of villagers.

The state governor reported in a press release on Wednesday that the attack on the two villages was due to the recent anti-terrorism operations in the region.

AbdulRazaq thought it was clear to “distract the security personnel who had managed to track down various terrorist and kidnapping gangs.”

Amnesty said that 21 people were killed in an attack in Doma village in Katsina state in the north on Tuesday. On exactly the 17th, the same day, in a series of attacks in the north-eastern state of Borno, 17 people were killed, which was believed to be carried out by suspected Boko Haram militants.

The attacks coincide with the first formal recognition of the presence of the American troops in Nigeria by the new US President Donald Trump, who in November ordered the military to prepare to operate in Nigeria to address the Islamist militant groups.

Nigerian Defence Minister Christopher Musa gave no information on the size of the team, the arrival date, where it was, or how long it was there.

His remarks come after his remarks on Tuesday by Gen Dagvin Anderson of the US Africa Command (Africom), who announced that the deployment was in response to a request by the Nigerian government and that it was intelligence-oriented.

The example that he gave of a very willing and capable partner is the partnership with Nigeria, which asked for the special capabilities that can only be provided by the US.

Nigeria has a range of security issues, such as criminal gangs localised as bandits who steal and ransom kidnapping, an Islamic insurgency, land disputes and separatist violence.

Joint training programmes and exercises between the US and Nigerian forces have been taking place for decades.

The US military has, however, taken an increased part in this, conducting airstrikes on Christmas Day on two camps of the militant group called Lakurawa in the north-west.

Towards the end of last year, the white house put pressure on the Nigerian government to ensure that security was enhanced and more efforts were put in place to secure the Christian communities.

Trump had already alleged that Christians in Nigeria were being persecuted, a statement that the government of Nigeria dismissed vehemently, claiming that it is Muslims, Christians and people with no faith that were the victims of the attacks.

Nigeria is home to over 250 ethnic groups and is approximately split into a predominantly Muslim north, predominantly Christian south, with the middle in between.

Yusuf Tuggar, the Foreign Minister of Nigeria, said that Tinubu authorised the Christmas Day attacks and that the Nigerian forces were involved.

This has increased security co-operation between the two countries since then – the US claimed last month that it had provided critical supplies to help Nigeria in its security efforts.

The military of Nigeria at the time informed the BBC that the equipment was earlier bought to be used in counter-insurgency activities.

Nigerian troops have increased their efforts against militants in recent weeks.

On Sunday, the army announced that it had killed a high-ranking Boko Haram leader and 10 other militants in an operation in Borno state.