After years of ethnic tension, political crisis and violence against Igbo communities in northern Nigeria, the Eastern Region declared independence as the Republic of Biafra in 1967. The ensuing Nigerian Civil War lasted until 1970.
Estimates of the dead are very wide, from about half a million to as many as three million, the majority civilians and many from famine caused by the federal blockade. It remains one of the defining humanitarian crises of the 20th century.