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Thu 23 Feb 2006

Over 90 killed in Nigeria protests

Bodies littered the streets of the southern Nigerian city of Onitsha as the death toll from days of Christian-Muslim violence across the volatile West African nation rose to at least 93.

The sectarian violence was sparked by deadly weekend protests against cartoon caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

It is the worst to hit Nigeria since 2004, when Muslim-Christian skirmishes in northern Nigeria's Plateau and Kano states killed more than 700 people.

"I've counted more than 20 people killed today," Onitsha resident Isotonu Achor said after gangs of rioters armed with machetes and shotguns poured through the mainly-Christian city.

"Major streets are littered with bodies of people killed today, most of them northerners," Achor said. Other witnesses also said they saw at least 20 dead. Thirty people were killed in Onitsha a day earlier.

Nigeria, Africa's most populous country of more than 130 million people, is roughly divided between a predominantly Muslim north and a mainly Christian south. Thousands of people have died in religious violence since 2000.

In Onitsha, residents said soldiers opened fire on a mob of ethnic Igbo Christians that tried to enter the military barracks after reports ethnic Hausa Muslims sheltering in the barracks had attacked a nearby primary school, killing a number of children.

The claims could not be verified and it was not clear if the soldiers killed anyone in the mob.

The deaths brought to at least 93 the number of people killed in Nigeria since Saturday in the northern city of Maiduguri, where Muslim protests against cartoons caricaturing the Prophet Muhammad turned violent, razing 30 churches and claiming the lives of 18 people, mostly Christians.

Similar violence followed on Monday and Tuesday in the northern city of Bauchi, where witnesses and Red Cross officials say 25 people were killed when Muslim mobs attacked Christians there.

This article: http://news.scotsman.com/latest_international.cfm?id=279972006

Last updated: 23-Feb-06 07:47 GMT