Nigerian police patrol central city
27/09/2005 21:50  - (SA)  

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Lagos - Police stepped up security in a central Nigerian city Tuesday after a leadership crisis triggered riots in which three were killed, a police spokesman said.

The violence erupted on Sunday when hundreds of residents of Ilorin attacked a convoy transporting a newly installed chief of the city, said Ilorin police spokesman Gideon Markus.

Police intervened to save the chief - whose appointment was contested by many from his Yoruba tribe - and fired tear gas, after which an anti-police riot broke out.

Markus said the dead included a police corporal shot by a man who had taken up position in the house of the father of a political opposition leader. Rioters fired on police with Kalashnikovs and hunting rifles, the spokesman said, adding that the fighting ended Monday.

Markus wouldn't confirm media reports a Yoruba militia group, the Oodua People's Congress, were responsible for much of the violence. However, he said one of the civilians killed in the trouble was suspected to be a member of the group.

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