Clashes killed at least 11 people in central Nigeria on Saturday amid fresh tensions linked to a political meeting and an attack on buses carrying Muslim passengers, a military commander said.
The violence occurred in the city of Jos, where a series of Christmas Eve bomb blasts and resulting attacks left at least 80 dead.
Jos and the surrounding region have long been hotspots of ethnic and religious friction in Nigeria, and tensions have increased ahead of April elections.
Nigeria as a whole has also seen an upsurge in violence in recent weeks that many attribute at least in part to politics in the run up to the presidential, legislative and state polls.
“We have counted about 11 now in different locations,” Brigadier General Hassan Umaru, who commands a military task force in the region, said of the number of deaths in Jos on Saturday.
“This is a period of anguish over what happened last night,” he added, referring to the attack on the buses.
Various clashes occurred in the city, he said. Violence was linked to an opposition political meeting, as well as anger over the attack on two buses carrying Muslim passengers Friday night outside Jos, said Umaru.
At least one person was killed and eight were missing and feared dead following Friday night’s attack, authorities said.
Umaru said calm had been restored to the streets, but tensions remained. A spokesman for the opposition Congress for Progressive Change denied any of the violence was linked to the party.
On Friday night, the two buses carrying people who had attended a wedding were believed to have lost their way and ended up in the Christian village of Dogo Nahauwa, where scores died in clashes in early 2010, according to police.
One bus had managed to escape, but the other one carrying eight people has not been found and were feared dead.
“Since my team could not find both the vehicle and the occupants, I now conclude to you that eight people have been killed,” state police commissioner Abdulrahman Akano told reporters.
Another person from the bus that escaped later died from his injuries, he said. The attackers are believed to have used machetes.
In reaction to the attack, youths in a mainly Muslim area of Jos took to the streets on Saturday and appeared to be burning tyres. Soldiers fired into the air to disperse them.
Plateau state, where Jos is the capital, lies in the so-called middle belt between Nigeria’s mainly Muslim north and predominately Christian south.
Scores of people have been killed in clashes in the region in unrest many attribute to the struggle for economic and political power between Christian and Muslim ethnic groups.
Christians from the Berom ethnic group are typically referred to as the indigenes in the region, while Hausa-Fulani Muslims are seen as the more recent arrivals.
Nigeria has seen a sharp increase in violence in recent weeks, including bomb blasts in Jos and the capital Abuja, as well as attacks blamed on an Islamist sect in the country’s north.
On Friday, attackers targeted a rally for a prominent politician in Nigeria’s oil-producing region, killing several people and wounding scores of others, a military spokesman and witness said.
An AFP correspondent who was at the scene said it appeared around four people were killed, while some local media reported six dead. Authorities confirmed two fatalities.
The attack occurred as Timi Alaibe returned to his home in Bayelsa state from the capital Abuja after resigning from his post as President Goodluck Jonathan’s adviser on the oil-rich Niger Delta region.
The rally took place at his home and compound in the town of Opokuma. Alaibe resigned to run for governor in Bayelsa in the April elections.
The home of Alaibe, who oversaw the government’s amnesty programme for militants in the restive Niger Delta, has been attacked in the past.