19 die in religious clashes

2006-02-22 16:16

Onitsha - At least 19 Nigerian Muslims have been killed by a Christian mob at the entrance to the south-eastern city of Onitsha, reported an AFP correspondent who saw the bodies on Wednesday.

The corpses were scattered by the side of the main road into Onitsha across the Niger river bridge, where a contingent of soldiers had set up a roadblock to hold back a gang of hundreds of Christian youths wielding clubs and machetes.

The dead, apparently all ethnic Hausa who originate in the north, had been beaten, slashed and in some cases burnt.

A police official earlier told AFP that five more Hausas had been killed in the neighbouring city of Asaba, where thousands of Muslims had fled after the Onitsha riots.

Frank Nweke, a magazine editor, who ran the gauntlet of the mob to escape Onitsha and made it to the bridge, told reporters that he had seen 15 more corpses lying in the streets of the city.

Some of them had been beheaded, others had had their genitals removed.

Severed head

"I saw one boy holding a severed head with blood dripping from it," he said.

Army officers could not confirm a total death toll, but said that thousands of Muslims had taken shelter in barracks and police stations.

Nigeria's Christian-dominated state of Anambra has imposed a curfew in Onitsha following riots in which northern Muslims were killed in revenge attacks, a government spokesperson said.

"A dusk-to-dawn curfew has been imposed to contain the violence.

"The governor made the announcement yesterday (on Tuesday) after an emergency security meeting," Fred Chukwuelobe told AFP.

He said police reinforcements had been sent to Onitsha and its environs to prevent further violence.

Tuesday's clashes in Onitsha were sparked by weekend killings of Christians in some Muslim-dominated cities in northern Nigeria after protests over cartoons of Prophet Muhammad, first published in a Danish newspaper.

Nigeria's 130-million-strong population is divided roughly equally between Muslims and Christians of a variety of sects and denominations.

- AFP