Unidentified gunmen killed 38 people, mostly women and children, in raids on two villages in northern Nigeria's Kaduna state, an area plagued by years of sectarian conflict, officials said Tuesday.

"Twenty-one people were killed in Karshi and 17 others were killed in Nandu. We are yet to identify those behind the attacks," the head of the area's local government, Emmanuel Adamu Danzaria, told AFP.

"Most of the victims were women and children," he added, in an account supported by Ahmed Maiyaki, spokesman for Kaduna's Governor Mukhtar Yero.