Hours after a police security alert flagged the movement of armed elements toward Plateau, gunmen stopped a commercial bus outside Jos and killed nine passengers.

At around 9:30pm on Sunday, gunmen opened fire on a Toyota bus at Dungus Junction in Kuru, Jos South, as it stopped to drop off passengers on the way into Jos. Seven people died at the scene. Two more died later in hospital from gunshot wounds.

The bus conductor, Nasiru Garba, was the only survivor. He told reporters the attackers approached after the shooting, opened the front door, searched him, and took his money and his charging phone. A neighbour of one of the dead, teacher Lawan Suleiman, identified the driver as a former student of his, and said three of the victims were from his own community.

The Plateau Police Command confirmed the toll at nine. The same night, separate attacks in Mangu and Riyom local government areas killed four more people and left dozens of cattle dead, according to community accounts of the wider violence.

This is the state police intelligence had already named, that same day. A police wireless message dated September 13, the day of the attack, warned of “increased mobilisation of terrorist elements for possible coordinated attacks” and disclosed the movement of armed elements from Katsina through Kaduna toward Plateau State. The alert was framed around schools, NYSC camps and places of worship, ahead of the new academic term. Sunday’s attack hit none of those specific target types. It hit a commercial bus on a rural road, in the exact state the warning had named, the same night the warning was dated.

The Chief of Army Staff, Waidi Shaibu, visited Plateau on Monday, a day after the attack. He reviewed the security situation with the 3 Division commander, Maxwell Dangana, and ordered troops to sustain pressure on criminal elements. He also inspected the construction of a new drone control station meant to improve surveillance in the area.

Plateau’s Commissioner of Police, Ayodeji Faniyan, mobilised Mobile Police units, tactical teams, homicide detectives and forensic experts to the scene after the attack. That response came after nine people were already dead. The bus itself, registration BUU 621 ZL, was found stained with blood and riddled with bullets, still parked where the gunmen left it.

None of that changes what happened at Dungus Junction on Sunday night. The alert named Plateau. The attack happened in Plateau the same night the alert was dated. It was not an attack on one of the specific target categories the warning named, a school, an NYSC camp, a place of worship. It was a commercial bus on the road to Jos.