The world in brief

86 people killed in Nigerian clashes

LAGOS, Nigeria — Nigeria’s presidency late Sunday announced “deeply unfortunate killings across a number of communities” in central Plateau state as one report cited police as saying 86 people were dead in clashes between mostly Muslim herders and Christian farmers.

President Muhammadu Buhari appealed for calm, saying “no efforts will be spared” to find the attackers and prevent reprisal attacks.

Nigeria’s government did not announce a death toll. But the independent Channels Television cited a Plateau State police spokesman, Mathias Tyopev, as saying 86 people had been killed, with at least 50 houses destroyed, in violence that appeared to have started overnight.

Herders, facing the Boko Haram extremist insurgency in Nigeria’s northeast and climate change that is hurting grasslands, have been moving south into more populated farming communities in search of safe grazing.

Group reports 36 villagers killed in Mali

BAMAKO, Mali — A community militia killed 32 civilians in an attack on a village in central Mali, then returned shortly after Malian soldiers left and killed four more, the head of the West African nation’s largest ethnic Fulani association said late Sunday.

Mali’s government earlier in the day confirmed the first attack and said 16 people were killed, as the Fulani ethnic group faces growing pressure over accusations of links to al-Qaida extremists.

The death tolls differed because many bodies had been buried by the time Malian soldiers responded, Abdoul Aziz Diallo with the Tabital Pulaku association told The Associated Press.

The original attack occurred Saturday when militia members killed herders outside Koumaga before entering and “starting to fire on the villagers,” Diallo said.

Koumaga village has the reputation of being home to a number of al-Qaida-linked extremists. Such fighters have been attacking security forces and a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali regularly since 2015.

N. Korea tempers response to Trump

SEOUL — North Korea appeared unwilling Sunday to respond harshly after President Donald Trump reversed course to declare it still a threat, pledging that its leader Kim Jong Un’s regime seeks a “new era” with the United States.

The comments also did not address promises by North Korea to return the remains of some U.S. military personnel from the Korean War. On Saturday, the U.S. military sent 100 wooden coffins to a U.N.-supervised area in the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas in anticipation of receiving some of the remains.

A report in Uriminzokkiri, a North Korean website that reflects the views of Kim’s regime, urged both sides to move ahead with “faithfully implementing” the joint declaration from the June 12 summit in Singapore between Trump and Kim.

But North Korea has yet to clarify its interpretation of denuclearization in the region. In the past, Pyongyang has defined it to include an end to the U.S.-South Korea military alliance and U.S. withdrawal of its nuclear umbrella protecting South Korea and Japan.

“We will conscientiously fulfill our responsibility to address decades-long tensions and hostile relations, and open a new era of the North-U. S. cooperation,” the Uriminzokkiri report added, without mentioning North Korea’s nuclear program or Trump.

Saudis shoot down missile from Yemen

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi Arabia’s state media said the kingdom’s air defenses intercepted a ballistic missile fired over the capital from Yemen, where Saudi-led coalition forces are at war.

Residents in the capital, Riyadh, reported on social media Sunday evening hearing the sound of loud explosions overhead.

The state-run al-Ekhbariya said no casualties were immediately reported.

Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels have fired more than 100 missiles at Saudi Arabia in the past three years as the kingdom wages devastating airstrikes against the group. The war has killed at least 10,000 Yemeni civilians.

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