Police and soldiers patrolled the deserted streets of this northern Nigerian town yesterday, one day after thousands of Nigerian Muslims protesting caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed attacked Christians and burned churches, killing at least 15 people.
Most residents stayed at home amid a tense calm, fearful of a repeat of the previous day's violence -- the first major protest to erupt over the issue in Africa's most populous nation.
On Saturday, rioters burned 15 Christian churches in Maiduguri in a three-hour rampage before troops and police reinforcements restored order, Nigerian police spokesman Haz Iwendi said. Security forces arrested dozens of people suspected of taking part in the violence, Iwendi said.
A reporter on the scene saw mobs of Muslim protesters swarm through the city center with machetes, sticks and iron rods. One group threw a tire around one man, poured gas on him and set him ablaze.
Chima Ezeoke, a Christian Maiduguri resident, said the protesters attacked and looted shops owned by Christians, most of them with origins in the country's south.
"Most of the dead were Christians beaten to death on the streets by the rioters," Ezeoke said.
Witnesses said three children and a Catholic priest were among those killed.
Elsewhere, Pakistani police arrested several lawmakers, put some radical Islamic leaders under house arrest and detained hundreds of their supporters in raids in three cities in a bid to foil a Sunday rally in the capital against cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, officials said.
Police fired tear gas and at least one gun shot to disperse about 100 people who attempted to reach a square to protest in Islamabad.
In unrelated violence in another northern Nigerian state, Katsina, one person was killed on Saturday when protesters demonstrated against suspected plans by Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo to amend the constitution to remove current two-term limit and go for a third term in office, residents and witnesses there said.
Nigeria, Africa's most populous country of more than 130 million people, is roughly divided between a predominantly Muslim north and a mainly Christian south. Christians are a minority in Maiduguri.
Mutual suspicions between the Christian and Muslim communities often break out into sectarian violence in Nigeria.
Thousands of people have died in this West African country since 2000 in religious violence fueled by the adoption of the strict Islamic or Shariah legal code by a dozen states in the north, seen by most Christians as a move to impose religious hegemony on non-Muslims.
Nigeria had been spared much of the violence the issue has sparked in other parts of the world.
On Feb. 7, lawmakers in the heavily Muslim state of Kano burned Danish and Norwegian flags outside the local parliament building and barred Danish companies from bidding on a major construction project.
They also voted unanimously to cancel a US$25 million contract to buy 70 Danish buses.
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