At least 19 Nigerian Muslims were killed by a Christian mob at the entrance to the southeastern city of Onitsha yesterday, according to an AFP correspondent who saw the bodies.
The corpses were scattered by the side of the main road into Onitsha across the Niger river bridge, where a contingent of soldiers had set up a roadblock to hold back a gang of hundreds of Christian youths wielding clubs and machetes.
The bodies, apparently all ethnic Hausa, had been beaten, slashed and in some cases burnt.
"There are thousands of boys with cutlasses and sticks on the rampage. I've counted at least 20 bodies here by the Onitsha bridge. They are Hausas. Some of them are burnt and some have their stomachs cut open," a Reuters photographer said.
A police official earlier said that five more Hausas had been killed in the neighboring city of Asaba, where thousands of Muslims had fled after the Onitsha riots.
The Hausa are the main ethnic group in predominantly Muslim northern Nigeria, while Onitsha is located in the ethnic Ibo heartland, a mainly Christian region.
Frank Nweke, a magazine editor, who ran the gauntlet of the mob to escape Onitsha and made it to the bridge, told reporters that he had seen 15 more corpses lying in the streets of the city.
Some had been beheaded, others had had their genitals removed.
"I saw one boy holding a severed head with blood dripping from it," he said.
Army officers could not confirm a total death toll but said that in the city, where control has not been restored, thousands of Muslims had taken shelter in barracks and police stations.
A doctor at the Onitsha general hospital said more than 50 newly injured people had been brought in yesterday.
Nigerian Red Cross said on Tuesday that in the mainly Muslim northern city of Bauchi, protests by Muslims targeting Christians claimed the lives of 18 people. In Onitsha, Christian mobs burned two mosques and beat to death at least six Muslims, residents and witnesses said.
The continued mayhem brought to at least 66 the total number of people killed in sectarian fighting in Nigeria since Saturday, when protests over controversial cartoons published in Europe of the Prophet Mohammed turned violent for the first time in the northern Muslim city of Maiduguri, police said.
Similar protests broke out in Bauchi city soon afterward, leaving seven dead on Monday and another 18 dead on Tuesday, Adamu Abubakar, secretary of the Red Cross in Bauchi, told reporters.
Mobs ran through Bauchi's streets wielding machetes and sticks, Abubakar said.
"I am just coming back from Gombe Road, where we carried two dead bodies, both badly mutilated, and just at Boni Haruna Street near the Specialist Hospital, two of my staff were attacked and are seriously wounded," Abubakar said. "So, the situation is still delicate."
Among the dead there were a man, his wife and their daughter. Six bodies were burnt beyond recognition.
The violence in Onitsha appeared to be a reprisal for anti-Christian attacks on Saturday in Maiduguri, where police said 30 churches were burned down and 18 people, mostly Christians, were killed. The Christian Association of Nigeria put the death toll in Maiduguri higher, at 50 dead.
"The mosque at the main market has been burnt and I've counted at least six dead bodies on the streets," Izzy Uzor, an Onitsha resident and businessman, told reporters by telephone on Tuesday. "The whole town is in a frenzy."
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
POWER ABUSE WORRY: Some people warned that the broad language of the treaty could lead to overreach by authorities and enable the repression of government critics Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi yesterday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. The new global legal framework aims to bolster international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries signed the declaration, which means it would go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an “important milestone,” and that it was “only the beginning.” “Every day, sophisticated scams destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy...
RSS