Homes set ablaze in violence-torn Nigerian region

Rioters set homes on fire and youths armed with machetes set up roadblocks through a Nigerian city plagued by violence between Christians and Muslims.

Witnesses heard gunshots and saw smoke rising yesterday from a southern neighbourhood in Jos, where more than 500 people died last year.

The latest rioting comes after 11 people died around Jos on Saturday from religious violence and a political rally gone awry.

Meanwhile, police in a city in north-east Nigeria are investigating a mass shooting at an illicit beer garden that left eight people dead and four others wounded.

In Jos, families hid inside homes or wherever they could find shelter from yesterday’s violence.

Lawyer Kwampkur Samuel Bondip said he was trapped inside a church with his family after Muslim youths blocked the road and began attacking passers-by.

Danlami Mohammed, an official with a local Muslim organisation, said the youths began rioting after finding arsonists had burned homes in their neighbourhood overnight.

Police officers and soldiers struggled to keep the violence under control.

“We have deployed our men to control the situation,” said Plateau state police commissioner Abdurrahman Akano.

The violence appeared to be a reaction to other attacks over the weekend.

Christian youths attacked a car full of Muslims returning from a wedding in central Nigeria on Friday night, killing seven people inside the vehicle and sparking retaliatory violence that left one other person dead.

Another three people were killed and several others were wounded when a meeting of a political party aligned with former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari collapsed into violence, witnesses said.

Nigeria, an oil-rich country of 150 million people, is almost evenly split between Muslims in the north and the predominantly Christian south. Jos is in the nation’s “middle belt,” where dozens of ethnic groups vie for control of fertile lands.

The Jos violence, though fractured across religious lines, often has more to do with local politics, economics and rights to grazing lands.

The government of Plateau state, where Jos is the capital, is controlled by Christian politicians who have blocked Muslims from being legally recognised as citizens. That has locked many out of prized government jobs in a region where the tourism industry and tin mining have collapsed in the last decades.

On Christmas Eve, two bombs went off near a large market in Jos where people were doing last-minute Christmas shopping. A third hit a mainly Christian area of Jos, while the fourth was near a road that leads to the city’s main mosque.

Officials initially said at least 32 died from the blasts, while an official with the National Emergency Management Agency said he had counted 80 deaths from the explosions and the retaliatory violence that followed.

An internet message attributed to a radical Muslim sect known in northern Nigeria as Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the bomb attacks. However, the sect had never carried out an attack in that region before.

Meanwhile, witnesses say gunmen stormed an illicit, outdoor bar on Friday night in Gombe, a city in north-east Nigeria. The state is one of a dozen in Nigeria that implements Islamic Sharia law, which bans the drinking of alcohol. Most states, however, have hidden spots where locals can drink.

The gunmen opened fire on those drinking there, initially killing seven people, authorities said. An eighth person died in hospital. Gombe state police spokesman Usman Kamba said the dead included customers and the woman running the bar.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, though members of Boko Haram have made attacks there in the past.