Two frightened women hurry past the widespread destruction that took place in Jos.
Up to 150 more bodies have been found in Kuru Karama village, 30km (18 miles) from the city of Jos, where the violence erupted late last month. Correspondents say elders hid in holes for seven hours to escape the violence. An exact death toll is not known but overall up to 450 – 600 are thought to have died in the Muslim-Christian clashes. Several thousand people fled their homes. Their are also reports indicating that many of the bodies found in Kuru Karama had massive burns; other victims were hacked to death or shot. There are still more bodies scattered in the bush beyond the village but the areas are not safe for volunteer workers to enter.
Umar Baza, head of Kuru Karama village, told Agence France-Presse news agency: “So far we have picked 150 bodies from the wells. But 60 more people are still missing.” The Human Rights Watch group said armed men had attacked the mostly Muslim Kuru Karama on 19 January.”After surrounding the town, they hunted down and attacked Muslim residents, some of whom had sought refuge in homes and a local mosque, killing many as they tried to flee and burning many others alive,” it said in a statement. It quoted one villager as saying: “I came back on Wednesday evening escorted by the military. I saw dead bodies everywhere. The corpses were there, but now you can just see the blood on the ground. None of the houses are standing.”
The group called on Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan to order an immediate criminal investigation into reports of the massacre. Mr Jonathan deployed the military after four days of clashes. He has been issuing orders while President Umaru Yar’Adua receives medical treatment in Saudi Arabia. The security forces have now restored order and a curfew has been partially lifted. But foreign correspondents say the atmosphere is still tense. Jos, the capital of Plateau state, lies at the point where Nigeria’s Muslim north and predominantly Christian south meet.
Meanwhile, the authorities in Jos gave a death toll sharply at odds with those of rights groups and local activists, even as the central Nigerian city seemed to be returning back to calm. Nigeria While Human Rights Watch said over 400 had been killed in fighting between gangs of Muslims and Christians, the Plateau state police commissioner, Gregory Anyating, maintained in an interview that only 23 were dead as a result of the fighting. He said he had no explanation for the divergence. Meanwhile, a leading Muslim official in Jos, Mohammed Lawal Ishaq, secretary of the Ulama Council, an umbrella group for the state’s Islamic organizations, said he had counted 70 bodies at the city?s central mosque alone. He called Mr. Anyating’s figure a bloody lie.
Corinne Dufka of Human Rights Watch noted that typically state authorities underestimate the extent of intercommunal violence. All were agreed, though, that tensions had diminished, partly thanks to a heavy military and police presence in the city. Today the town has been relatively quiet, Mr. Anyating said. Uneasy calm, he said, adding that Jos is gradually getting over it, by the grace of God. Mr. Anyating said that we have much more security in place. Buildings torched over the last several days continued to smolder, but there were no fresh reports of burning, Mr. Anyating said.
Jos has seen repeated such outbreaks of sectarian violence over the last decade, resulting in hundreds of deaths. With the precise cause for this latest spasm unclear, Mr. Ishaq warned that fighting could easily break out again.It would be foolhardy for anyone to think the violence would be over, he said. Nobody anticipated this crisis. By yesterday evening everything was on fire. With this now, nobody is sure it’s over. The police have detained more than 250 youths in connection with the clashes.
It is unclear what the trigger was for the latest bout of violence, but there have been reports it started after football match. Other reports suggested it began after an argument over the rebuilding of homes destroyed in the 2008 clashes. Jos has been blighted by religious violence over the past decade with deadly riots in 2001 and 2008. The city is in Nigeria’s volatile Middle Belt – between the mainly Muslim north and the south where the majority is Christian or follow traditional religions. Clashes in Nigeria are often blamed on sectarianism. However, poverty and access to resources such as land often lie at the root of the violence.
Tags: Goodluck Jonathan, Kuru Karama, Mohammed Lawal Ishaq, Mr. Anyating, secretary of the Ulama Council, state's Islamic organizations
