LAGOS, March 3: At least 64 people, including a soldier and seven policemen, have been shot and hacked to death in communal clashes in northeastern Nigeria, police and Red Cross officials said on Monday.

The officials said nomadic herdsmen and farmers clashed several times in northeastern Gombe state and in neighbouring Adamawa state. They said 40 people were killed in the Adamawa violence on Thursday and a further 24 died in a series of clashes in Gombe last week.

Police said they were investigating reports by villagers that armed Chadians triggered a bloodbath in Adamawa with an invasion of one of the remotest corners of Nigeria.

The mounting violence in northern Nigeria comes at a tense time for the oil-producing West African nation, which is due to hold a series of presidential and local elections from April 12 to May 3.

More than 10,000 people have been killed in religious, ethnic and political violence since Olusegun Obasanjo was elected president of Africa’s most populous nation in 1999.

But a police spokesman said there were no political undertones to the violence, which broke out in the Song district of Adamawa state last Thursday.

“We have confirmed a total of 40 people killed,” police spokesman Chris Olakpe said in Abuja, adding that the toll included 32 civilians, a soldier and seven policemen who were killed by the warring factions.

—Reuters