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.

A spokeswoman for the Nigerian Red Cross, Umo Okon, said there were 925 victims of violence in Onitsha over the two days, including deaths, injuries and people displaced from their homes.

On the outskirts of Onitsha, several hundred Muslims fled, boarding trucks headed north. Nigeria is roughly divided between a predominantly Muslim north and a mainly Christian south.

A spokeswoman for the neighbouring city of Asaba, across the Niger River, said 5,000 refugees were sheltering in police barracks there.

Soldiers and police patrolled in armoured personnel carriers and trucks, providing protection for health workers picking up dead bodies from the streets.

Gov Chris Ngige extended a curfew imposed on Onitsha to the nearby towns of Nnewi and Awka, after Muslim northerners had been attacked and killed in those places on Wednesday.

Deaths have also been reported in violence against Muslims in Enugu, a mainly Christian and ethnic Igbo-dominated city, some 97km north of Onitsha.