Religious violence claims 80

2004-05-04 11:48

Abuja - Fighters of a predominantly Christian tribe attacked a town dominated by a rival Muslim ethnic group, razing homes and mosques and killing at least 80 people, Nigerian police said on Tuesday.

The ethnic Tarok assailants, armed with machetes, British colonial-era muskets and homemade guns, attacked the predominantly Hausa town of Yelwa, 350km east of the capital Abuja, early on Monday morning, said Raymond Nyama, a police officer who visited the scene.

Police counted 80 bodies littering otherwise abandoned streets, Nyama added. An unknown number of mosques were burned.

Nigeria's This Day newspaper put the death toll at 100 or more, with three mosques and more than 1 000 homes destroyed.

Tens of thousands of residents were fleeing the area on foot, carrying whatever possessions they could carry, police said.

Although motives were unclear, the attack happened a week after Hausas launched an attack on the Tarok village of Kawo, burning churches and inflicting an unknown number of casualties.

The heavily-Christian Tarok farmers and predominantly-Muslim Hausa traders and cattle herdsmen have launched back-and-forth raids since an outbreak of religious violence in the regional city of Jos left more than 1 000 people dead in September 2001.

Since January, violence has surged, killing hundreds in the region of fertile farms and pastures, police and civic groups say.

Religious, ethnic and political enmities - often intertwined - have fueled outbreaks of communal bloodletting resulting in more than 10 000 deaths since President Olusegun Obasanjo was first elected in 1999.

- AP