Nigerian Muslims flee city as sectarian violence subsides

MUSLIMS fled this southeast Nigerian city and corpses still smouldered in its streets as two days of sectarian violence that killed more than 50 people subsided.

Onitsha has borne the brunt of a wave of sectarian violence across the country, sparked by weekend protests against caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed. The violence is the worst of its kind since 2004, when Muslim-Christian skirmishes in northern Plateau and Kano states killed more than 700 people. Thousands have died in religious violence since 2000.

Yesterday, in Onitsha, angry Christians defaced a mosque destroyed a day earlier. At least nine bodies could be seen laying charred in the dirt streets of the riverside city and three corpses burned on a pyre of old tires.