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ENUGU, Nigeria (Reuters) - Muslim and Christian mobs killed 11 people in three Nigerian cities on Friday, extending a week of tit-for-tat religious riots that have claimed at least 157 lives and injured more than 900.

Uncertainty over Nigeria's political future is aggravating regional, ethnic and religious rivalries ahead of elections next year. Rioting began in the mainly Muslim north and revenge attacks followed in the Christian south.

In the northern town of Kontagora, machete-wielding Muslim mobs killed nine people and torched four Christian churches, a Nigerian Red Cross official in Lagos told Reuters. They also looted shops owned by minority Christians, police said.

In the city of Enugu in the southeast, Christian youths armed with machetes and clubs attacked Muslims, beating one motorcycle taxi driver to death and burning a mosque.

A stray bullet also killed an 8-year-old Christian girl and rioters blocked off the area with burning barricades.

Nigeria's Red Cross said that in addition to the killings, the week of violence had injured 930 people and displaced about 16,000 across the multi-ethnic country.

James Obi, a market trader who was part of the mob in Enugu, said they killed the taxi driver, known locally as an Okada, after a rumor that a Muslim policeman killed a Christian boy.

"We got angry and we killed one of them on Okada. His corpse has been set ablaze," he said.

In northeastern Potiskum, Muslim youths burned shops, churches and houses belonging to minority Christians early on Friday. Police said 65 rioters were arrested.

BLOODBATH FEARS

The religious violence first broke out last Saturday in the northeastern city of Maiduguri, when a Muslim protest against Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad ran out of control and 28 people were killed, most of them Christians.

But the violence has taken on a logic of its own in Africa's most populous country, divided roughly equally between Muslims in the north and Christians in the south. Thousands have died in religious violence over the past six years.

Authorities are afraid the fighting could spiral into a bigger bloodbath and hundreds of armed riot police patrolled major cities across the north.

Many Nigerians believe President Olusegun Obasanjo and some state governors will try to stay in office for a third term after eight years in power. The prospect angers those who want their own ethnic or regional blocs to have their turn.

"If the north has a problem with the third term, that is no reason to attack ordinary people and destroy houses," said Joseph Hayab of the Christian Association of Nigeria.

In the far south of the country, militants in the oil-producing Niger Delta have waged a three-month campaign of attacks and kidnappings, which has cut supplies from the world's eighth largest oil exporter and driven up world prices.