“The travellers were attacked by unknown gunmen on Saturday when their vehicle broke down. The police has recovered five bodies,” said Tahav Agerzua, spokesman for the state governor, Samuel Ortom.

He said the government has launched an investigation into the incident that happened in the town of Yelwata along the Lafia-Makurdi highway.

The governor condemned the killings in a statement on Sunday, describing the perpetrators as “hoodlums” and called for their prompt arrest.

The chairman of Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria, Danladi Chiroma, said those killed were herdsmen of Fulani descent.

“The victims were Fulani herders who were from Awe in Nasarawa State. They were travelling on Saturday evening to attend a naming ceremony in another location when they were attacked,” Chiroma said.

“Unfortunately, the vehicle which the deceased persons were travelling in developed a problem at Yelwata, and it was at the process of trying to fix the fault that the hoodlums believed to be Tiv youths pounced on the victims and killed them,” he said, referring to farmers of Tiv descent.

Chiroma also indicated a higher death toll, claiming 10 people were killed with six bodies recovered.

Benue State lies in Nigeria’s so-called Middle Belt that separates the Muslim-majority north from the Christian-majority south.

The area has long been a hotbed of racial and religious tensions between farming communities, who are mostly Christian, and nomadic cattle herders, who are mostly Muslim.

Tensions have boiled over access to land and resources, escalating into a rift that has deepened along nominally religious lines.

On Thursday at least 10 people were killed in the villages of Tse-Adudu and Enger in Benue State.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, a Muslim from northern Nigeria, is under intense pressure to end the killings that have claimed hundreds of lives since January.