KANO: Rioters killed at least 50 people and burned down three mosques in fresh violence between Christians and Muslims in northern Nigeria, a journalist who visited the local morgue said on Wednesday.

Fighting had erupted in Numan on Tuesday after Christian majority of the town objected to the building a mosque with a minaret overlooking a local chief’s palace, officials and witnesses said. Governor Adamawa State Boni Haruna visited the scene on Wednesday and found the mortuary of the town’s hospital filled with 50 bodies, state radio reporter Ibrahim Abdulazeez said.

Haruna’s spokesman Willie Zalwalie, who had earlier stated that seven more bodies had already been transferred to the state capital Yola, would not confirm the death toll. He said, "The governor was in Numan where he declared a dusk until dawn curfew and ordered security personnel sent to the town to shoot anybody trying to inflict harm on anyone or trying to destroy anything." Zalwalie added, "The curfew will last until order is restored." Numan’s Muslims are rebuilding their main mosque, which was destroyed on June 8 last year, when 100 people where killed in a riot triggered by the murder of a Christian evangelist, Esther Jinkai, by a Muslim.