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Hundreds were killed and thousands forced to flee their homes in the central Nigerian city of Jos when Christians and Muslims clashed over the result of a local election, witnesses said Saturday.
"So far about 400 bodies have been brought to the mosque following the outbreak of violence," the worst sectarian riots since President Umaru Yar'Adua took office last year, Khaled Abubakar, the imam of the central mosque in Jos, said.
"Families are coming to identify and claim the bodies, while those that can not be identified or nobody claims them will be interred by the mosque," Abubakar said.
Road links to Jos from the Muslim-majority north were sealed on Saturday, a journalist said, and flights to the city cancelled.
Earlier in the day, a correspondent for Radio France Internationale in Jos, Aminu Manu, said he had counted 381 bodies at the mosque.
"Hundreds of people have been killed in the last two days since the riots started," Christian clergyman Yakumu Pam said. "Remains of burned bodies litter some parts of the town. It is so terrible."
Radio Plateau said the governor of Plateau State, Jonah Jang, had placed four districts of Jos under a curfew and ordered police to fire on anyone who broke it following the clashes on Friday.
There was no official confirmation of the death toll.
Local residents said several churches and mosques were razed in the violence, which started with a rumor that the All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP) had lost the local election to the federal ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP).
The ANPP is perceived in Jos to be a predominantly Muslim party, and the PDP to be mainly Christian.
Jos is the administrative capital of Plateau state. It was the scene of a week of violence between Christians and Muslims in September 2001 that also left hundreds dead.
Manu, the Radio France Internationale reporter, said he saw around 300 youths, a mixture of Muslims and Christians, who had been arrested for taking part in the riots and who were at police headquarters.
He also reported having seen around 100 people with gunshot wounds who said they had been shot by the security forces.
Another Jos-based reporter for the Punch newspaper said he counted 55 bodies in three hospitals.
Manu said the bodies in the hospitals are thought to be those of Christians.
"So far over 10,000 people have been displaced from their homes and are now seeking refuge in churches, mosques and army and police barracks," a Nigerian Red Cross official in Jos, Dan Tom, said.
"I can't give any figures but there are dead bodies on the streets that are yet to be evacuated. We are afraid of an outbreak of an epidemic if they are allowed to decompose," he told AFP.
"In these places where people are taking refuge, there is no water and no food. We call on the Nigerian emergency management agencies to come to their aid," he added.
On Friday night Red Cross spokeswoman Umo Okon said from Abuja that there were "over 300 injured" in different health centres in the town. She declined to estimate the number of dead.
A brief government statement late Friday said that President Umaru Yar'Adua was "very sad" about the situation and that he had sent in troops to contain the riots.
© Wire reports
20 Comments
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30061015
Afghanistan,Pakistan,Iraq,Sudan,India,Nigeria...Next(?)carnage in the "name of God" coming to a country near you. The veneer of civilization is thin and getting thinner. A world on the brink. Lock and load.
yosun
My Nigerian friend ever told me that if European (French...etc.) didn't put their hands in this poor country, bad things like this won't be happened so often. Nigeria has oil and this maybe his sin?
TooFarGone
In a mere two weeks we go from Afghanistan to Iraq to the coasts of Somalia to Mumbai, and today Nigeria...
More and more bloodshed brought to you by the global jihadis.
Sarge
What the hell is wrong with these people?
smithinjapan
TooFarGone: THANK YOU! I was just WAITING for one of you to come on here and post this kind of garbage. Let's look at the article again:
"Jos is the administrative capital of Plateau state. It was the scene of a week of violence between Christians and Muslims in September 2001 that also left hundreds dead."
b-b-b-b-b-but Christians are involved in this too??! Not possible! I thought only all MUSLIMS were terrorists and that only Islam was full of loonies! Is this not so?
"Manu, the Radio France Internationale reporter, said he saw around 300 youths, a mixture of Muslims and Christians, who had been arrested for taking part in the riots and who were at police headquarters."
Oh my... well, TooFarGone... time to add all Christians to the mix of terrorists, and all Christians as wanting the Crusades (or Holy War).
My point is that this is shining proof of the fact that you canNOT condemn an entire religion and/or belief system based on the actions of some members. This is not a case of Muslims attacking Christians -- both are fighting each other and rioting, creating chaos. So, if you claim all members of one religion to be terrorists/savages or what have you, you have to do the same for both.
I, on the other hand, simply wonder what's going through the minds of these individuals that would lead to this. The world certainly seems to be going to hell in a hand-basket. That being said, it takes more than one to tango, and quite a few for a world-wide dance party.
TooFarGone
Imagine that. Muslim settlers to the region protest the outcome of democratic elections, rampage, and the local Christians fight back.
Bad dhimmis! Apparently they have rejected smithinjapan's suicidal Leftist ethos of 'tolerance' in the face of evil and 'non-violence' as viable response to physical attack.
I don't know. SInce I have never said this or harbored such thoughts you'll just have to ask the strawmen you create.
bebert
In India, it takes an extreme terrorist attack to create a death toll just half the size of this tragedy. But in Africa? Hey, it's just another sunshiny day in Africa. Come for a visit. Bring the kids! (But don't get off the boat. You never get off the boat!)
Don't blame the religion. They'd be fighting if one group worshiped monkeys and the other worshiped snakes. Blame the rampant tribalism that infects the whole of subSaharan Africa. And that used to be kept under control at one time, at least in the colonies the British administered.
Betzee
This region of Nigeria has been the site of many clashes. But it's hard to chalk it up to religious differences when the two groups differ on many other dimensions. Christians engage in subsistence farming; the Hausa-Fulani Muslims are herders. Both populations are growing as the amount of land shrinks (due to desertification).
This is, at heart, a conflict over resource use. It's been exacerbated by the Nigerian government's decision to grant some inhabitants of the central plateau "indigenous" status which accords them preferential treatment. In reality, getting it often requires a bribe or knowing the right person, leading to dissatisfaction on the part of those who either don't know anybody or lack funds.
What's more interesting is what's happened in the northern, Muslim part of Nigeria since the adoption of sharia criminal code:
The Islamic revolution that seemed so destined to transform northern Nigeria in recent years appears to have come and gone — or at least gone in a direction few here would have expected.
When Muslim-dominated states like Kano adopted Islamic law after the fall of military rule in 1999, radical clerics from the Arabian peninsula arrived in droves to preach a draconian brand of fundamentalism, and newly empowered religious judges handed down tough punishments like amputation for theft. Kano became a center of anti-American sentiment in one of the most reliably pro-American countries in Africa.
But since then, much of the furor has died down, and the practice of Islamic law, or Shariah, which had gone on for centuries in the private sphere before becoming enshrined in public law, has settled into a distinctively Nigerian compromise between the dictates of faith and the chaotic realities of modern life in an impoverished, developing nation.
smithinjapan
TooFarGone: "I don't know. SInce I have never said this or harbored such thoughts you'll just have to ask the strawmen you create."
Oh yeah, that's right! How silly of me to bring up all your 'let's blame the Muslims for the woes of the world' as being hateful towards, well, Mulims! (in general). I mean, with a statement like: "...Apparently they have rejected smithinjapan's suicidal Leftist ethos of 'tolerance' in the face of evil..." whom are you labelling as evil, here? Clearly, since you think it was Muslims attacking Christians and Christians merely defending themselves and doing no wrong, you are blaming Muslims (and calling them evil, and saying that tolerating a belief system instead of destroying it is suicidal, etc.). You lose again.
Perhaps you didn't read the part of the article which talks about these clashes having happened before in the region. And no, it's not always Muslims attacking and Christians fighting back; it's ransacking, rioting, killing by BOTH sides. Again, it takes two to tango, my friend. The idea that this is one-sided is what is REALLY the 'suicidal' thinking.
Keep it coming, though. So long as you continue to blame one side for all the problems in the world, without trying to take some POSITIVE action and do something about it, you'll see events of this more and more.
Betzee
The article I pasted in makes an important point; radical clerics, often from Saudi Arabia, do move around the globe trying to create a pan-Islamic consciousness. You find them in far-flung places like the southern Philippines, or northern Nigeria, where people have limited awareness of life beyond their own community. So part of this linkage of local grievances to a few larger well-known causes is due to their efforts.
TooFarGone
smithinjapan has posted
"So long as you continue to blame one side for all the problems in the world, without trying to take some POSITIVE action and do something about it, you'll see events of this more and more."
Relax. We are on an internet forum. Do you actually believe your posts will change the minds of people you quite casually call 'racists' and 'fools'?
What "positive actions" have you taken? Are you saying I should follow your example and come on here with fatuous, empty gestures like offering 'my condolences to the victims and their families'?
30061015
Intolerant theocratic regimes that convict people in clerical kangaroo courts & decapitate them for "blasphemy" derive there legitimacy from an atmosphere of fear, intimidation and a culture of hate and death. They believe they have a monopoly on the truth and are justified in the sight of God for their cowardly acts. The scum that slaughtered innocents on 911 and in Mumbai would unleash nuclear jihad if they could. If this isn't pure evil, what is? We allow this kind of evil to prevail when we don't recognize the threat and do nothing, which is exactly what they want.
Helter_Skelter
TooFarGone: It's been said repeatedly that first-world Leftists crave Dhimmitude, and who better to represent this statement than smithinjapan. He's sorta become the JT poster child for Dhimmitude.
smith: Pretty much everyone at this point recognizes there's a global problem with Islam. Best accept it rather than post the same rhetoric again and again that no one is buying, let alone reading, anyway.
Moderator: Readers, please stop commenting about each other. Focus your comments on the topic.
Badsey
there is nothing new here:
Muslims: attackers Christians: attacked
Same old, same old.
Papawhale
Religion is just an excuse, a smokescreen--these are thugs offering small money to kids to promote their gangs for greed. Nothing more.
smithinjapan
Helter: "Pretty much everyone at this point recognizes there's a global problem with Islam. Best accept it rather than post the same rhetoric again and again that no one is buying, let alone reading, anyway."
Clearly you're reading, and hence the comment. It's good for you though, because you clearly need to learn a thing or two, and I'm happy to help in that regard. Anyway, it's clear YOU are not buying, but that's nothing new; you refuse to believe anything but the kind of ignorance that ultimately led to what happen, and so long as the very very few of you on here who 'aren't buying' keep on ignoring the real problems, well... I guess we'll keep reading about this kind of thing more and more, and you guys will keep having to finally ask 'why'?
I know why already: ignorance and intolerance. These two things have been the reason for wars since war could be waged. It's the reason some terrorists gave for attacking Bombay, and the reason they will be attacked in return; and it's the reason for the attacks here -- nutbags of both religions claiming they are right, the other wrong, they were attacked first, and they were fighting back in defense. It's an endless cycle that will certainly stay that way if people like Helter_Skelter and TooFarGone have their way (to name but a few). Oh, but of course, if they round up all the innocent Muslims in Nigeria it'll be in 'defense'. Those Muslims interred for no reason will later war against those who imprisoned them in 'defense' and for 'revenge', to which said people who rounded them up will 'defend' themselves, etc.
Since I have to point it out AGAIN to those who refuse to see the facts, there were both Christians AS WELL AS Muslims fighting each other. Play chicken and egg all you want, but you condemn one you condemn them both.
Elbuda Mexicano
We can blame Muslims today, Christians tomorrow, let's see it was Hindus killing Christians the other day in India, what is the main denominator? Idiots of xxx religion, who put their XXX religion above the humanity, above respecting not only themselves but all of humanity withouth discrimination. We are all humans when we are born, and the last time I checked we were all humans when we die. Nigeria etc..needs to focus on the common "humaness, compassion,mercy, love" that all humans need NOW!
rurika
Betzee
You left out the grenade explosion in Thailand (other thread) in this violence 'round the world round-up. That didn't merit any comment from you simply because the disputants were not Muslim? Thailand has a Muslim minority population in the south. If they had been involved, well it would have been included in Exhibit A, since the perpetrators were presumably Buddhist, well it gets filed under the "stuff happens" category. Case selection bias has corrupted your conclusion....
Betzee
Nigeria has been mixed for a long time, it's demographics aren't changing. The violence is in the Christian south where the oil rich region opted to become "Biafra" in the late 1960s (a state immediately recognized by Shell oil but not other governments). Nigeria set up a blockade in response and essentially starved the Biafrans back, the death toll was high. There's still much violence because inhabitants of the oil-rich Niger Delta are dirt poor while those in the faraway capital live high on the hog thanks to the oil receipts.
Here's a case where control of natural resources can be separated from Islam to determine the cause of the violence. It's clear it's driven by control of natural resources, not religious identity.