Nigerian Muslim cartoon rioters kill 15 people

Thousands of Nigerian Muslims protesting caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad attacked Christians and burned churches in north-eastern Nigeria, killing at least 15 people, police and residents said.

It was the first major protest to erupt over the issue in Africa’s most populous nation.

Rioters burned 15 Christian churches in Maiduguri in a three-hour midday rampage yesterday before troops and police reinforcements restored order, Nigerian police spokesman Haz Iwendi said. Security forces arrested dozens of people suspected of taking part in the violence, Iwendi said.

An Associated Press reporter on the scene saw crowds of Muslim protesters run through the city centre with machetes, sticks and iron rods. One group threw a tire around one man, poured gas on him and set him ablaze.

Chima Ezeoke, a Christian Maiduguri resident, said the protesters attacked and looted shops owned by minority Christians, most of them with origins in the country’s south.

“Most of the dead were Christians beaten to death on the streets by the rioters,” Ezeoke said.

Witnesses said three children and a Catholic priest were among those killed.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country of more than 130 million people, is roughly divided between a predominantly Muslim north and a mainly Christian south. Christians are a minority in Maiduguri.

Mutual suspicions between Christians and Muslims often break out into sectarian violence in Nigeria.

Meanwhile, Pakistani police today raided offices and homes of dozens of radical Islamic leaders, putting several under house arrest and detaining hundreds of their associates in a bid to foil a rally in the capital, officials said.

Qazi Hussain Ahmad, the chief of a six-party coalition was placed under house arrest in the eastern city of Lahore, while other senior leaders were either arrested or asked not to leave their homes in Islamabad, where the rally was to be held today.

Mian Maqsood, a spokesman for the coalition said ”hundreds” of Islamic leaders had been arrested, although Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said only about two dozen had been detained to stop the latest protest against the publication of Prophet Muhammad cartoons in Europe and elsewhere.

The arrests came hours after the government warned radical Islamic groups against holding the rally, fearing that it would spark more violence after at least five people died in riots across the country over the past week.

Yesterday, about 12,000 women joined a non-violent rally in the southern city of Karachi. The event was organised by Jamaat-e-Islami – the country’s oldest and best-organised religious party.

“We want that those who drew these blasphemous cartoons to be hanged,” Aysha Munawar, a senior leader of the party, told the crowd. She also urged the government to sever ties with countries where the cartoons have been reprinted.

Lawmaker Ghaffor Ahmad, another leader of the group, said in a speech that police and the army should join the protests.