Saturday, November 29, 2008

Hundreds Dead In Clashes In Nigerian City: Witnesses

From Yahoo News/AFP:

LAGOS (AFP) – Hundreds were killed and thousands forced to flee their homes in the central Nigerian city of Jos when Christians and Muslims clashed over the result of a local election, witnesses said Saturday.

"So far about 400 bodies have been brought to the mosque following the outbreak of violence," the worst sectarian riots since President Umaru Yar'Adua took office last year, Khaled Abubakar, the imam of the central mosque in Jos, told AFP.

"Families are coming to identify and claim the bodies, while those that can not be identified or nobody claims them will be interred by the mosque," Abubakar said.

Road links to Jos from the Muslim-majority north were sealed on Saturday, an AFP journalist said, and flights to the city cancelled.

Earlier in the day, a correspondent for Radio France Internationale in Jos, Aminu Manu, told AFP he had counted 381 bodies at the mosque.

Read more ....

My Comment: As I had mentioned in a previous post this afternoon .... this has the potential to get completely out of control .... a fact that is unfortunately rapidly becoming the case in the region.

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