The death toll from a series of attacks on villages in central Nigeria has climbed to almost 200, local authorities said Wednesday, as survivors began to bury the dead.

Armed groups launched attacks between Saturday evening and Tuesday morning in Nigeria’s Plateau State, a region plagued for several years by religious and ethnic tensions.

The West African nation – Africa’s most populous and divided roughly evenly between Christians and Muslims – has been plagued for years by rising sectarian tensions and the Islamist terror group Boko Haram, which most recently was blamed for a massacre of scores of farmers in Borno State.

During a meeting with Nigeria’s vice president on Wednesday, Monday Kassah, head of the local government in Bokkos, Plateau State, said that 148 Bokkos villagers had been killed in the attacks.

At least 50 people were also reported dead in several villages in the Barkin Ladi area, according to Dickson Chollom, a member of the state parliament.

Video has reportedly surfaced of the massacre:

“We appeal to you to resist the temptation to succumb to sectional divisions or the poisonous rhetoric of hatred towards your fellow citizens, as we pursue justice to ensure your security,” Vice President Kashim Shettima told local officials and displaced people on Wednesday.

There are fears the death toll could rise further as some people remain missing, Kassah told AFP on Tuesday, adding that 500 people had been injured and thousands displaced.

He said that at least 20 villages had been targeted in a series of well-coordinated attacks between Saturday evening and Monday morning.

Gunfire could still be heard on late Monday afternoon, according to a source from the region, which is on the dividing line between Nigeria’s mostly Muslim north and mainly Christian south.

A large number of the dead were buried on Tuesday, with the vice president of the Church of Christ in Nations, Timothy Nuwan, putting the number at 150.

“There are many people that were killed, slaughtered like animals, cold-blooded, some were in their houses, some were even outside,” he said.

Reporting on the massacre has been stifled and censored with prominent voices being blocked on platforms like Instagram:

Holy martyrs, pray for us!