Sect Attack Claim Complicates Nigeria Crisis Local Christian and Muslim communities have clashed for years in Nigeria's middle belt and the conflict took an unexpected turn this week when Islamist insurgents based in the country's removed northeast claimed responsibility for a raid and attacks that killed dozens, signaling a dangerous change of tactics for the group. Many thought Muslim herdsmen had been behind the weekend raids on Christian villages. Hundreds of assailants armed with guns and machetes stormed about a dozen Christian villages in the pasturelands in Plateau state in central Nigeria on Saturday, said Capt. Mustapha Saliu, a spokesman for a special unit of police and soldiers deployed to halt long-running communal violence in the area. Some attackers wore police uniforms and bullet-proof vests, he added. The following day, as dignitaries attended a mass burial for the victims, assailants attacked again, leaving a federal senator and a state lawmaker dead. Authorities initially said the lawmakers had been ambushed and killed in the attacks, but Saliu now says they both lost consciousness and eventually died as people ran for cover while gunmen shot "in the air." The Nigerian Red Cross said at least 58 people had died in the attacks and security forces' reprisals. They said that toll was expected to rise as aid workers searched for bodies and violence persisted in the tense region. Most of the victims are presumed to be Christians. A statement attributed to the Nigerian Islamist radical sect Boko Haram and obtained by The Associated Press this week said that it was responsible for the attacks and warned that Christians "will not know peace again" if they do not accept Islam. The claim fits into the sect's previously expressed plan to increase attacks targeting Christians. Before now, they had claimed responsibility for bomb attacks on churches in the Plateau state capital of Jos as well as other cities and towns further north. They've also said in previous statements that they would avenge the deaths of Muslims in Plateau state. Boko Haram stepping forward adds another element of danger to the conflict in Nigeria's middle belt. However, authorities say these attacks didn't use bombs or other explosives - Boko Haram's weapons of choice. Instead, the assailants chose to raid the villages which would be a dangerous extension of Boko Haram tactics. It is also a style of attack Muslim herdsmen of the Fulani tribe have used in the past. The local violence, though fractured across religious lines, often has more to do with local politics, economics and rights to grazing lands. The government of Plateau State is controlled by Christian politicians who have blocked Muslims from being legally recognized as citizens. That has locked many out of prized government jobs in a region where the tourism industry and tin mining have collapsed in the last decades. In 2010, Human Rights Watch said that at least 1,000 people died in communal clashes. Clashes between Muslim Fulani herdsmen and Christian farmers of the Berom tribe remain common despite a state of emergency imposed on Plateau state. In most parts of Nigeria, a large-scale attack targeting Christians would have been blamed on Boko Haram, but in violence-torn Plateau state the claim raises questions, leaving analysts divided about what could have happened.