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."
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday vowed that those behind bogus flood control projects would be arrested before Christmas, days after deadly back-to-back typhoons left swathes of the country underwater. Scores of construction firm owners, government officials and lawmakers — including Marcos’ cousin congressman — have been accused of pocketing funds for substandard or so-called “ghost” infrastructure projects. The Philippine Department of Finance has estimated the nation’s economy lost up to 118.5 billion pesos (US$2 billion) since 2023 due to corruption in flood control projects. Criminal cases against most of the people implicated are nearly complete, Marcos told reporters. “We don’t file cases for
A feud has broken out between the top leaders of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party on whether to maintain close ties with Russia. The AfD leader Alice Weidel this week slammed planned visits to Russia by some party lawmakers, while coleader Tino Chrupalla voiced a defense of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The unusual split comes at a time when mainstream politicians have accused the anti-immigration AfD of acting as stooges for the Kremlin and even spying for Russia. The row has also erupted in a year in which the AfD is flying high, often polling above the record 20 percent it
Ecuadorans are today to vote on whether to allow the return of foreign military bases and the drafting of a new constitution that could give the country’s president more power. Voters are to decide on the presence of foreign military bases, which have been banned on Ecuadoran soil since 2008. A “yes” vote would likely bring the return of the US military to the Manta air base on the Pacific coast — once a hub for US anti-drug operations. Other questions concern ending public funding for political parties, reducing the number of lawmakers and creating an elected body that would
‘ATTACK ON CIVILIZATION’: The culture ministry released drawings of six missing statues representing the Roman goddess of Venus, the tallest of which was 40cm Investigators believe that the theft of several ancient statues dating back to the Roman era from Syria’s national museum was likely the work of an individual, not an organized gang, officials said on Wednesday. The National Museum of Damascus was closed after the heist was discovered early on Monday. The museum had reopened in January as the country recovers from a 14-year civil war and the fall of the 54-year al-Assad dynasty last year. On Wednesday, a security vehicle was parked outside the main gate of the museum in central Damascus while security guards stood nearby. People were not allowed in because
RSS