3,000 flee to Jos following militia attack

More than 3,000 people have sought refuge at a military barracks in Jos, capital of central Nigeria's Plateau State, following an attack by armed men on a nearby village, police told IRIN on Wednesday.

Seventeen people were killed and several others wounded in the attack, blamed on Muslim Hausa-Fulani militiamen, state officials told IRIN. Most of the people who have taken refuge at the Rukuba barracks are Hausa-Fulanis who fear retaliatory attacks, police said.

Plateau Governor Joshua Dariye said the militia attacked Dagwom Turu village, Vwang district, in "a reprisal attack" for casualties suffered by Muslims during violent confrontations with local Christians in September 2001. Residents said over 40 militiamen, armed with guns, swords, bows and arrows, arrived in the village by bus.

"Apart from those I could identify as Hausa-Fulani, there were also among them people who looked like foreigners from Chad and Niger," Simon Jang, a resident of the village, told IRIN. Soldiers from the barracks later engaged the militiamen, killing eight of them.

At least 500 people died in the September violence between Christians and Muslims in Jos. It was one of several incidents of sectarian violence that have rocked Nigeria in the past two years on the heels of the adoption of Islamic law by several predominantly Muslim northern states.