Nigerian violence kills 5 more
2004-05-20 14:16
Jos, Nigeria - At least five people were killed when Muslim fighters attacked a mainly Christian village in central Nigeria's Plateau State, regional police chief Commissioner Innocent Iluozoke said on Thursday.
The attack on the village of Sabo Gida, 300km east of Abuja, took place on Tuesday, just as Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo suspended Plateau's governor and imposed a state of emergency.
"The killers are suspected to be Hausa-Fulani militia," Iluozoke told reporters.
For the past three years Christian ethnic groups in Plateau have been fighting a bloody turf war with Hausa and Fulani Muslims for control of the fertile farmland on the southern slopes of Nigeria's central highlands.
Sabo Gida is in the Shendam local government area near the market town of Yelwa. On May 2 a Christian militia from the Tarok ethnic group attacked this Hausa-Fulani settlement and killed more than 200 people.
The massacre sent shockwaves around Nigeria - triggering bloody Muslim reprisals in the northern city of Kano - and forced Obasanjo to depose Plateau's Christian governor and re-appoint a former military administrator.
- AFP