Thursday, February 23, 2006 - 12:00 AM
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AP
Angry youths check cars for people from the Muslim north Wednesday in Onitsha, Nigeria. Bodies littered the streets as violence flared in response to deadly weekend protests against cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
By Craig Timberg
The Washington Post
ONITSHA, Nigeria — Religious riots sparked by the publishing of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad continued into their fifth day in Nigeria as Christian mobs in this southern city attacked Muslim motorists, leaving at least 22 dead. Nationwide, the toll was at least 65 dead and likely to rise.
Thousands of refugees also huddled at police stations and army barracks to avoid hordes of angry young men bent on avenging days of killings in northern Nigeria cities.
"They've been killing our brothers and sisters in the north," men shouted Wednesday morning, according to motorist Afoma Clara Adigwe, 40, shortly after driving through Onitsha. She escaped the mobs, she said, only by speaking the Ibo language dominant in this heavily Christian section of Nigeria.
Nigerian news reports put the death toll at 22, but that appeared low. At least 19 bodies were visible along the road within several hundred feet of the Head Bridge, which crosses the Niger River. The bodies appeared to have been beaten and, in several cases, burned beyond recognition. Discarded sandals and the round, decorative hats favored by Muslims from northern Nigeria were left behind.
News reports also said the mobs burned two mosques in Onitsha. Reports said the riots began Tuesday after a bus arrived in the city carrying the bodies of Christians killed by mobs Saturday in the mostly Muslim northeastern city of Maiduguri. At least 18 Christians were killed, and 30 churches were burned.
Those attacks were followed Monday by rioting in another northern and mostly Muslim city, Bauchi, where 25 died over two days.
Nigeria, Africa's most populous country with more than 130 million people, is split roughly in half between a mostly Muslim north and a Christian and animistic south, but most areas contain a mixture of all three religious groups after centuries of migration and extensive trading. The Hausa are the main ethnic group in the predominantly Muslim north, while Onitsha is in the heartland of the Ibo Christian group.
Religious violence in one part of the country often sparks reprisal killings elsewhere.
Security forces guarded churches and mosques and patrolled streets in an attempt to quell tensions.
The cartoons, which first appeared in a Danish newspaper in September and have been republished in Europe and the United States, have triggered deadly protests around the world. Islam widely holds that representations of Muhammad are banned for fear they could lead to idolatry.
Background was provided by The Associated Press.