Hundreds of Muslims have been killed by Christian militia in ethnic fighting in the central Nigerian town of Yelwa, a police officer said on Tuesday.
Mutilated and charred corpses were still lying on the main street of the remote market town on Tuesday as thousands of Muslims lined the roadside chanting religious slogans and vowing revenge on the attackers.
PHOTO: REUTERS
"Allah will avenge us. The pagans have killed our people," said one man. "There will be religious war in this country," said another. Many had white powder marks on their noses, a sign of mourning.
The conflict between the Tarok, a Christian tribe of farmers, and the Fulani, nomadic Muslim cattle herders, is rooted in competing claims over the fertile farmland of southern Plateau state in the heart of Africa's most populous nation.
One witness said hundreds of heavily armed Tarok militia began the attack on Sunday night by sealing all the roads to the town. They invaded on foot and in jeeps, shooting semi-automatic rifles and burning houses.
A senior policeman, who asked not to be named, told reporters: "Hundreds of people including students, women and children were killed."
His estimate was supported by one villager who said more than 300 people were buried in mass graves he helped to dig on Monday, the second day of the killings.
The police had previously reported "heavy casualties" and said they recovered 67 corpses. A witness counted another 10 on Tuesday.
Almost every house lining the main street of Yelwa was burned and some were still smouldering on Tuesday. A mosque was also destroyed. Charred beds, mattresses and kitchen utensils were scattered on the ground.
A heavily armed convoy with a local politician and workers to dig mass graves drove through the town on Tuesday but could not stop because of the heightened tension.
"The bodies were all over the place yesterday. Some of them must have been removed because the deputy governor was coming," a policeman said.
Before this attack, at least 350 people had been killed in three months of tit-for-tat fighting between the Tarok and Fulani.
About 100 soldiers were on the streets of Yelwa on Tuesday, after earlier attempts by police to enter to the town had failed due to the superior firepower of the Tarok militia, a policeman said.
In Christian villages near Yelwa, hundreds of youths were sitting on the roadside, apparently awaiting further violence.
The attack in Yelwa follows clashes further south in Taraba state last month, in which more than 100 were killed as marauding Tarok fighters hunted retreating Fulani militia.
Analysts say the feud between the Tarok farmers and nomadic Fulani cattle herders has been fuelled by irresponsible allocation of land by the government and growing lawlessness across Nigeria, the world's seventh largest oil exporter.
Yelwa town has already witnessed one of the most horrific massacres of the conflict, when 48 Christians were killed by Fulani militia in a church that was later burned in February.
The last three months have seen the bloodiest fighting in the region since the state capital, Jos, was torn apart by ethnic violence in 2001 that killed 1,000 people.
Tens of thousands have already had to leave their homes in Plateau because of the fighting and thousands now live in temporary accommodation in schools and other public buildings across three states.
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