2 reporters killed in Jos
2010-04-26 17:07
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Nigeria
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Lagos - Two journalists working for a Christian magazine were stabbed to death by a mob in a predominantly Muslim suburb in the flashpoint Nigerian city of Jos, a union official said on Monday.
Nathan Dabak, deputy editor of the bi-monthly Light Bearer and reporter Sunday Gyang Bwede, were pulled from a motorcycle and killed on Saturday evening as youths rioted in the aftermath of the death of a Muslim teenager.
Jos, capital of the central Plateau State, was the epicentre of inter-religious violence which local rights groups say killed 1 500 people since the beginning of the year.
"They were macheted in an area that is predominantly Muslim and one can deduce that the killers were Muslim," Katdapba Gobum, chairperson of the Nigeria Union of Journalists in Plateau State, told AFP.
Relatives of one of the men called his cellphone when he failed to turn up for an appointment. The phone was answered by a Hausa-speaking man who claimed to have killed the journalist.
The motorcyclist who took them was also killed.
Police were not immediately available for comment.
Plateau State sits on a line between Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north and the mainly Christian south.
Because of the recent violence in Plateau, journalists cannot freely move around the state to do their work, said Gobum.
"Because of the latest crisis, a number of our colleagues have been careful where to go and where not to go," he said.