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."
Two former Chilean ministers are among four candidates competing this weekend for the presidential nomination of the left ahead of November elections dominated by rising levels of violent crime. More than 15 million voters are eligible to choose today between former minister of labor Jeannette Jara, former minister of the interior Carolina Toha and two members of parliament, Gonzalo Winter and Jaime Mulet, to represent the left against a resurgent right. The primary is open to members of the parties within Chilean President Gabriel Boric’s ruling left-wing coalition and other voters who are not affiliated with specific parties. A recent poll by the
TENSIONS HIGH: For more than half a year, students have organized protests around the country, while the Serbian presaident said they are part of a foreign plot About 140,000 protesters rallied in Belgrade, the largest turnout over the past few months, as student-led demonstrations mount pressure on the populist government to call early elections. The rally was one of the largest in more than half a year student-led actions, which began in November last year after the roof of a train station collapsed in the northern city of Novi Sad, killing 16 people — a tragedy widely blamed on entrenched corruption. On Saturday, a sea of protesters filled Belgrade’s largest square and poured into several surrounding streets. The independent protest monitor Archive of Public Gatherings estimated the
Irish-language rap group Kneecap on Saturday gave an impassioned performance for tens of thousands of fans at the Glastonbury Festival despite criticism by British politicians and a terror charge for one of the trio. Liam Og O hAnnaidh, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, has been charged under the UK’s Terrorism Act with supporting a proscribed organization for allegedly waving a Hezbollah flag at a concert in London in November last year. The rapper, who was charged under the anglicized version of his name, Liam O’Hanna, is on unconditional bail before a further court hearing in August. “Glastonbury,
The Vatican Museums on Thursday unveiled the last and most important of the restored Raphael Rooms, the spectacularly frescoed reception rooms of the Apostolic Palace that in some ways rival the Sistine Chapel as the peak of high Renaissance artistry. A decade-long project to clean and restore the largest of the four Raphael Rooms uncovered a novel mural painting technique that Renaissance painter and architect Raphael began, but never completed. He used oil paint directly on the wall, and arranged a grid of nails embedded in the walls to hold in place the resin surface onto which he painted. Vatican Museums officials
RSS