Gunmen have killed 17 people in Nigeria’s central state of Benue, police said Friday, the latest flare-up of intercommunal violence to hit the region in recent weeks.

Axar.az reports, citing Reuters, Police spokeswoman Anene Sewuese Catherine said in a statement that they had received a report overnight that “a large number of suspected militia had invaded” a region of Benue state.

Security forces were deployed and as the assailants “were being repelled in the early hours of today, they shot sporadically at unsuspecting farmers” killing five people.

“Unfortunately an unsuspected simultaneous attack was carried out” in a neighboring local government area, where 12 people were killed before police arrived.

Clashes between nomadic cattle herders and farmers over land use are common in central Nigeria.

Two attacks in under two weeks have left more than 100 people dead in nearby north-central Plateau state.

In places, the attacks have taken on an ethnic and religious dimension in Africa’s most populous country.