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."
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
Japan is to downgrade its description of ties with China from “one of its most important” in an annual diplomatic report, according to a draft reviewed by Reuters, as relations with Beijing worsen. This year’s Diplomatic Bluebook, which Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s government is expected to approve next month, would instead describe China as an important neighbor and the relationship as “strategic” and “mutually beneficial.” The draft cites a series of confrontations with Beijing over the past year, including export controls on rare earths, radar lock-ons targeting Japanese military aircraft and increased pressure around Taiwan. The shift in tone underscores a deterioration
A retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America. Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a US$600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit. It is also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, said CEO Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
RSS