Clashes in Jos leave about 50 dead, thousands displaced

LAGOS, 10 September (IRIN) - At least 50 people have been killed and several thousands forced from their homes in three days of clashes between Hausa-Fulani Muslims and indigenous Christians in Jos, central Nigeria, residents said on Monday. President Olusegun Obasanjo has ordered troops into the streets of the town, which is the capital of Plateau State, to help overwhelmed policemen quell the fighting, which began on Friday. However, latest reports indicated that fighting continued in the southern suburbs between bands of Muslim and Christian youths. "According to the local radio station about 50 deaths have been confirmed in the fighting," Phil Nwachukwu, a resident of Jos, told IRIN. "But just looking out of my window on Saturday morning I counted at least seven corpses on my street alone, and judging by the scale of the fighting many more than 50 people must have died," added Nwachukwu, who lives in the city's northern suburbs, now under the control of security forces. Tens of thousands of people have taken refuge at police stations and the main military barracks in the town, where they are reported to be in dire need of food and water. Scores of buildings, including churches and mosques, have also been razed by rampaging mobs. Shops in the commercial districts have been extensively looted. A dusk-to-dawn (6 pm to 6 am) curfew announced by the state government on Friday was extended on Saturday from 4 pm to 7 am. Tension had been high in the city for several weeks after the federal government appointed a Muslim to head the National Poverty Eradication Programme in the state. Plateau's Christian majority had long haboured resentment towards the Hausa-Fulani settlers whom they accuse of claiming ownership of the areas where they live. "It is funny and insulting that a Hausa-Fulani from Bauchi, Kano or Katsina who settled in Jos among the indigenes would wake up one day to lay claim to a place leased to them,” Yakubu Itse of the Plateau Youth Council declared in a statement a week before the clashes broke out. Some analysts said the tense relations between Muslims and Christians were exacerbated by the adoption of Sharia (Islamic law) in several predominantly Muslim states north of Plateau in the past two years. "Following similar religious and ethnic clashes in Kaduna State last year caused by plans to introduce Sharia, large numbers of Christians have left the Muslim areas of the north to settle in Jos, along with their anti-Muslim grievances," Ebi Waritemi, another Jos resident, told IRIN. Speaking during his monthly radio phone-in programme on Saturday, President Olusegun Obasanjo described the events in Jos as a disgrace to the nation. "What sort of Christians or Muslims are those who when they clash, the first thing they do is to start burning down churches or mosques, places where God is worshipped?" he said.