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165 Killed in Religious Clashes in Central Nigeria: Red Cross
At least 165 people have been Killed and more than 900 others wounded in the Christian-Muslim clashes which erupted last weekend in Jos, the capital of Nigeria' s central Plateau State, the Nigerian Red Cross confirmed Monday in Lagos.
"Our records, as at this afternoon, show that 165 bodies have been deposited at various hospitals in Jos. We also brought 928 who are injured", Red Cross official Phillip Macham was quoted as saying by local radio.
"This figure includes those that were brought by the police and other organizations. We still have so many bodies on the streets. We are over stretched," he added.
Macham and other Red Cross officials, who come from the Plateau State and neighboring states of Benue, Bauchi and Kaduna, are now giving medical support to the victims of the religious violence in the various refugee camps in the city
Local radio reported the crisis has displaced more than 6,000 residents of the city. Most of refugees, including children, had been sleeping in the open space within the Plateau State police headquarters without blankets in spite of the very harsh weather, which has been aggravated by the continuing rainfall in the city.
Meanwhile, more people fled their homes to take refuge in police stations, schools and hospitals for fear of being attacked.
In the wake of mass burial of dozens of victims, skirmishes continued on Monday and spread to outskirts of Jos, especially Nasarawa and Ali-Kazaure areas, where fanatics were said to kill silently adherents of rival religions whenever they find them.
As part of efforts to restore order and peace, the Nigerian troops continued beefing up in the town, where combined teams of soldiers and police are now patrolling major streets and other trouble spots.
Almost all the churches held no service as Christians stayed away, while security agencies intensified the clearing of corpses that littered the roads.
Military men have mounted road blocks all over the city, firing into the air sporadically to scare away trouble makers. Pedestrians were made to raise up their hands when passing by a road block.
The tension had been accelerating in Jos following the appointment of Malam Mouktar Muhammad, a Hausa, as the coordinator of the Poverty Eradication Program for the Jos north local government area.
Although the indigenes, the Birom, Anaguta and Jarawas, protested that Muhammad was not an indigene, the Hausas stood firmly that their grandfathers were born in Jos, pointing out that they did not have another place to go to.
Following the development, the state government arranged a meeting for the contesting parties and it ended in a deadlock.
Nigeria, a multi-ethnic nation with a population of about 120 million, has been racked by religious and communal violence since its independence in 1960.
Earlier last Wednesday, about 21 people have been feared dead in a new surge of the ethnic clashes, which broke out between the ethnic Tiv people and their Fulani-Jukun neighbors in some communities in central Nigeria's Taraba State.
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