Nigerian Army Reinforces in Riot-Hit City: Jos
JOS – Nigeria’s army beefed up its presence yesterday in this central city to enforce calm after two days of post-election violence between Christians and Muslims that left hundreds dead.
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“The president has directed the chief of army staff to send in more troops to Jos to speed up the return to normalcy in the city”, Sani Usman, spokesman for the Chief of Army Staff Lieutenant General Abdurrahman Bello Dambazau, said. Reinforcements were brought in on Sunday night from Kaduna, in north-central Nigeria, and more fresh troops were expected from the federal capital Abuja yesterday, Usman told AFP.
The soldiers also increased the frequency of their patrols as residents of Jos started venturing back out on to the streets, albeit not in their usual numbers.
A curfew from dusk until 08h00 (0700 GMT) remains in place throughout the city, with the four areas of town worst hit by the rioting still subject to a 24-hour curfew.
Offering the first official toll on Sunday, Plateau State’s information commissioner Nuhu Gagara said about 200 people died during fighting on Friday and Saturday over the results of a local election in the state capital.
Other sources have given a toll twice the official figure.
“This figure is just preliminary, as a search and rescue committee has been inaugurated by the government to go around the city and recover dead bodies,” Gagara told reporters. He did not give a figure for the injured.
Military spokesman Brigadier Emeka Onwamaegbu declined to say how many troops had been deployed in the city.
The clashes were triggered by a rumour on Friday that the majority-Muslim All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP) had lost in a local election to the mainly Christian Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), according to a police spokesman.
Muslims and Christians for the most part cohabit peacefully in Nigeria.
But Jos, lying in Nigeria’s “middle belt” between the predominantly Muslim north and the mainly Christian south, already witnessed violent clashes between the two religious groups in 2001 when hundreds of people were also killed.
Another town in the same state, Yelwa, was hit by similar violence in 2004.
Hundreds of people also died in religious-based clashes in Kaduna state when it tried to impose Sharia law in 2000.
Relief workers and observers offered markedly higher death tolls than the government’s preliminary estimates.
“Well over 300 people have been killed in the last two days of violence,” one Nigerian Red Cross official told AFP, asking to remain anonymous.
Khaled Abubakar, an imam from the central mosque in Jos said on Saturday that “close on 400 bodies” had been laid out in the mosque.
Thirty of those bodies were removed from the mosque that night to buried by relatives and 351 were buried by the mosque authorities on Sunday, another Muslim cleric said.
Thousands have fled their homes and sought refuge in churches, mosques and army and police barracks, according to the Nigerian Red Cross.
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