500 dead in Nigeria religious attacks

THE Vatican led a wave of revulsion yesterday at the slaughter of hundreds of Christians in Nigeria, as survivors told of how the killers hacked victims to death after snaring them in animal traps.

Officials said more than 500 people were killed in the three-hour orgy of violence on Sunday in three Christian villages close to the city of Jos, blamed on members of a mainly Muslim clan known as the Fulani.

As troops were deployed to the villages to prevent any new violence, police detained nearly 100 suspects amid outrage at how machete-wielding gangs were able to go on the rampage at a time when a curfew was meant to be in force.

Newspapers reported that Muslim residents of the villages in Plateau state had been warned by text message, two days prior to the attack, so they could make good their escape.

Survivors said the attackers were able to separate the Fulanis from members of the rival Berom clan by chanting “nage”, the Fulani word for cattle. Those who failed to respond in the same language were hacked to death.

One local paper said the gangs chanted “Allah Akhbar” – Arabic for “God is greatest” – before breaking into homes and setting them alight in the early hours of Sunday. Churches were among the buildings burned down.

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said the Catholic Church felt “sadness and concern” at what he called the “horrible acts of violence”.

As several former Nigerian heads of state and the state government held a peace conference in a Jos hotel, dozens of students carried placards outside with slogans reading: “We want peace in Plateau” and “Say no to Genocide”.

The official death toll was initially put at a little over 100, but Dan Manjang, an adviser to the Plateau state government, said it had shot up. “We have been able to make 95 arrests but, at the same time, over 500 people have been killed in this heinous act.”

Government-run radio also reported that 500 people had been slaughtered, although witnesses and local rights activists put the figure at between 200 and 250.

The information ministry said that pregnant women were among those killed and that around 200 people were being treated in hospital.

Much of the violence was centred around the village of Dogo Nahawa, where gangs set fire to straw-thatched mud huts before embarking on their rampage.

Frank Tatgun, a resident of Dogo Nahawa, said he had seen two armoured vehicles and three military trucks arrive in the village and scores of troops were now on patrol as the authorities tried to prevent any flare-ups.

The explosion of violence is the latest between rival ethnic and religious groups. In January 326 died in clashes in and around Jos, according to police, although rights activists put the overall toll at more than 550.

“The attack is yet another jihad and provocation,” the Plateau State Christian Elders Consultative Forum (PSCEF) said in a statement.

However the archbishop of the Nigerian capital, Abuja, John Onaiyekan, told Vatican Radio that the violence was rooted not in religion but in social, economic and tribal differences. “It is a classic conflict between pastoralists and farmers, except that all the Fulani are Muslims and all the Berom are Christians.”

A curfew which was imposed after January’s unrest is supposed to be still in place, but Christian leaders said the authorities had done nothing to prevent the bloodshed.