Nigerian violence flares: 510 feared dead

 Special to USAfrica The Newspaper, Houston
USAfricaonline.com, The Black Business Journal and NigeriaCentral.com

September 13, 2001- ARMED mobs went on the rampage in two Nigerian cities on Wednesday in clashes between Christians and Muslims and a newspaper reported at least 500 people had died in five days of violence. Clashes which erupted on Friday in the central city of Jos between rampaging gangs of Christian and Muslim youths flared again on Wednesday after a day of calm, health workers and residents said.

"Renewed fighting broke out this morning in the Nassarawa district," of Jos, said the acting secretary-general of the Nigerian Red Cross, Abiodun Orebiyi. Dead and wounded had been taken to hospitals suffering machete and gunshot wounds, he said, declining to give firm figures.

A Nigerian newspaper, the state-run Daily Times, reported on Wednesday that more than 500 victims of the violence in Jos had been given a mass burial, after dark, late on Monday.

The bodies were taken to the Zaria Road cemetery in three trucks by heavily armed soldiers and buried under supervision of government officials.

The area was cordoned off to prevent news of the toll emerging and sparking reprisals, the paper said. Officials on Wednesday September 12, 2001 declined to comment on the toll - the highest yet advanced for the violence - though Biodun confirmed that a "very large" mass burial had taken place.

Meanwhile, the new fighting in Jos continued into Friday, September 14. "It is getting bad now in Jos. The Muslims have regrouped and they are fighting," said a Christian resident reached by phone who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"More houses are getting burned. More people are getting killed," said the man who would give his name only as Oliver. "Things are getting tough. The tension is very high. Soldiers are patrolling and firing in the air to bring the situation under control," a police official said.

At the same time, violence also erupted in the northern city of Kano where hundreds of Muslim youths attacked two churches overnight and set ablaze the house of a Christian man, in an apparent response to the violence in Jos.

The Holy Trinity Catholic Church and the Overcomers Sanctuary Pentecostal Church in the Shagari Quarters district of Kano, were both attacked overnight, the church leaders reported.

Catholic catechist Casmir Ogunma said the Holy Trinity church had been razed and the priest's residence set ablaze by youths angered by the events in Jos. Police had cordoned off the area around the church Wednesday and would not allow news agencies to visit the site.

Pastor Seyi Oluwasola of the Overcomes Sanctuary, who showed the AFP correspondent in Kano round the premises, said a mob of Muslim youths had attacked the church, destroyed instruments and religious books. "If it were not for the intervention of the police the situation would have been worse, he said.

James Enoch, a Christian, said he was leaving the city. "I can't live here any more. These youths are dangerous. They promised to come back and said when they come back nobody will be spared," he said. -

To far north of Jos, the historic city of Kano faced its own violence with a church set on fire, allegedly by Muslim youths. James Alalade, a pastor of the burnt church in Kano, told Reuters "They just came in with their weapons and petrol in cans and asked everybody out before setting the church ablaze. ...they were heavily armed."
The Jos conflict are said to reflect clashes between Christians and Muslims and communal squabbles. Thousands flee for safety against the background of the introduction of the Islamic Sharia law into the penal codes of some northern states. At least 1000 people were injured in Jos, the hospitable city of four million people. USAfricaonline with AFP report.

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