Dozens of villagers were killed Sunday in a northern Nigerian city, witnesses said, in what appears to be a fresh bout of violence between Muslims and Christians in Africa’s most populous country.
The witnesses and local aid officials reported widespread bloodshed but varying death tolls in the village of Dogo Nahawa, just south of the Nigerian city Jos.
Red Cross volunteers counted “more than 30 bodies, including women and children,” said Umar Abdul, who works for the emergency-aid organization in Jos. Meanwhile, a local journalist said he counted in the same village over 120 dead bodies of mostly women and children.
“We lost count of the corpses; they kept bringing out more bodies,” said the journalist, Isa Abdulsalami, of Nigeria’s Guardian newspaper.
Troops moved Sunday to contain the violence, say these witnesses. However, Nigerian police, military and government officials didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The Associated Press reported at least 200 people were killed, though that figure couldn’t be independently verified.
Jos serves as a volatile fault line separating the Muslim north from the predominantly Christian south, and religious communities have long battled over the area’s fertile farmland.
The sectarian clashes hand a fresh test to a Nigerian government that has been in disarray. The country’s president, Umaru Yar’Adua, who is suffering from a heart condition, returned home recently from a prolonged period overseas. He hasn’t been seen in public in more than three months, during which time militants have attacked oil infrastructure, controversial petroleum legislation has stalled and violence has flared in Jos. Ties with the U.S. also went into a tailspin when a Nigerian man allegedly tried to blow up a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day.
The country’s vice president, Goodluck Jonathan, has attempted to govern during the president’s absence, but has met resistance from some of Mr. Yard’Adua’s aides. In a statement, Mr. Jonathan’s office said he had ordered the country’s security services to track down “and defeat these roving bands of killers.”
The statement added that “the Acting President has placed all the security forces in Plateau and neighboring states on red alert so as to stem any cross-border dimensions to this latest conflict.”
Like past violence, the most recent killings in Jos appear to center on local grievances rather than instigation from any outside group. In January, several hundred people died in Jos after a Muslim man attempted to rebuild property that was burned down during similar clashes in late 2008. In those clashes, at least 700 people were killed, according to human rights groups.
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Will Connors
Wall Street Journal / Dow Jones Newswires Correspondent