Mobs of machete-wielding young men killed at least seven people and set fire to cars, stores and apartment buildings Tuesday after a march to protest the killings of hundreds of Muslims by gunmen from a predominantly Christian group last week.
Businesses closed and school children hurried home in the heavily Muslim northern city of Kano after thousands of protesters marched from the city's main mosque to protest the attacks on Hausa-speaking Muslims by fighters from the Tarok-speaking tribe in the central Nigerian town of Yelwa.
Seven bodies -- some charred and another badly mutilated -- lay on streets of Kano, although it was unclear who killed them. There were unconfirmed reports of several others killed by young men who barricaded streets with piles of burning tires and garbage.
Amina Usman, a 19-year-old university student, recounted seeing two mutilated bodies next to a makeshift checkpoint where young Muslim Hausa-speaking men holding sticks, knives and clubs were searching cars for Christian and animists and asking passengers to recite Muslim prayers.
"It was hell," said Mohammed Aliyu, another university student, who said he saw five bodies in another part of Kano, Nigeria's largest Muslim city, one of them with a burning tire around its neck.
Sule Ya'u Sule, a state government spokesman, announced a dusk-to-dawn curfew and blamed the rioting on "disgruntled elements" he did not identify. He stressed the earlier march had been peaceful.
A Red Cross official has said between 500 and 600 people died in the Yelwa attacks, while the Nigerian government's emergency response agency estimated less than half that number.
In the capital Abuja, President Olusegun Obasanjo met Tuesday with a delegation of Muslim leaders calling for the capture of the Yelwa attackers.
Obasanjo asked them to "tell your followers to be patient and give me time to resolve the matter."
"It's time now to put a permanent stop to this whole thing," Obasanjo said as reporters looked on. "The situation in Yelwa is condemnable and I condemn it in very strong terms."
In Kano, soldiers and police rushed into streets in armored vehicles in an attempt to quell what began as an angry demonstration but turned quickly into a riot.
"Everywhere, people have taken the laws into their own hands. We are trying to control the situation," Kano police commissioner Abdul Damini Daudu said.
An AP reporter saw youths at a makeshift checkpoint of burning tires strike three young women with machetes after accusing them of being "nonbelievers" for wearing Western-style skirts and blouses.
The women escaped with bleeding head wounds after several motorcycle taxi drivers intervened.
Muslim leaders in Kano, a hotbed of past violence, linked the Yelwa attacks to the US-led war against terror.
"This violence is a calculated global Western war against Muslims, just like in Afghanistan and Iraq," Umar Ibrahim Kabo, the most senior cleric in Kano, told protesters. "Muslims are in grief."
Ibrahim Shekarau, the governor of Kano, told protesters gathering outside his office that "killings of Muslims throughout the world ... will only embolden us."
Indonesia yesterday began enforcing its newly ratified penal code, replacing a Dutch-era criminal law that had governed the country for more than 80 years and marking a major shift in its legal landscape. Since proclaiming independence in 1945, the Southeast Asian country had continued to operate under a colonial framework widely criticized as outdated and misaligned with Indonesia’s social values. Efforts to revise the code stalled for decades as lawmakers debated how to balance human rights, religious norms and local traditions in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation. The 345-page Indonesian Penal Code, known as the KUHP, was passed in 2022. It
‘DISRESPECTFUL’: Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s most influential adviser, drew ire by posting an image of Greenland in the colors of the US flag, captioning it ‘SOON’ US President Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his claim that Greenland should become part of the US, despite calls by the Danish prime minister to stop “threatening” the territory. Washington’s military intervention in Venezuela has reignited fears for Greenland, which Trump has repeatedly said he wants to annex, given its strategic location in the arctic. While aboard Air Force One en route to Washington, Trump reiterated the goal. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “We’ll worry about Greenland in
PERILOUS JOURNEY: Over just a matter of days last month, about 1,600 Afghans who were at risk of perishing due to the cold weather were rescued in the mountains Habibullah set off from his home in western Afghanistan determined to find work in Iran, only for the 15-year-old to freeze to death while walking across the mountainous frontier. “He was forced to go, to bring food for the family,” his mother, Mah Jan, said at her mud home in Ghunjan village. “We have no food to eat, we have no clothes to wear. The house in which I live has no electricity, no water. I have no proper window, nothing to burn for heating,” she added, clutching a photograph of her son. Habibullah was one of at least 18 migrants who died
Russia early yesterday bombarded Ukraine, killing two people in the Kyiv region, authorities said on the eve of a diplomatic summit in France. A nationwide siren was issued just after midnight, while Ukraine’s military said air defenses were operating in several places. In the capital, a private medical facility caught fire as a result of the Russian strikes, killing one person and wounding three others, the State Emergency Service of Kyiv said. It released images of rescuers removing people on stretchers from a gutted building. Another pre-dawn attack on the neighboring city of Fastiv killed one man in his 70s, Kyiv Governor Mykola
RSS