Calm returns to Jos but violence spreads elsewhere

Ethnic and religious violence spread to other parts of Plateau State in Nigeria as calm returned to the state capital, Jos, after four days of fighting between Muslims and Christians, humanitarian workers said.

"As at yesterday, the situation in Jos was getting back to normal but new crisis areas erupted again," Patrick Bawa, spokesman of the Nigerian Red Cross, told IRIN on Tuesday. Other areas that experienced fresh fighting, he said, included Langtang, Kuru and Pankshin districts.

The Christian Association of Nigeria said Islamic militants in Kano, capital of predominantly Muslim Kano State, attacked and burnt a church on Monday in an apparent reaction to reports that Christians had attacked Muslims in mainly Christian Jos. Kano is just north of Plateau State.

About 1,000 northern Muslims took refuge at the main police station in the southeastern town of Aba after their quarters were besieged by local youths poised to mount reprisal attacks, the 'Punch' newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The Red Cross said, also on Tuesday, that "60,000 people have been displaced so far" in Plateau State alone.

Some news organisations reported a Red Cross volunteer as saying there were 165 deaths. However, Bawa told IRIN, "the casualty figures given by the volunteer were not in consonance with our position. That is not our figure."
He said the Red Cross was sticking to the official death toll of 51 given by the Plateau State government.

Other sources insisted that many more people had died than the government had so far acknowledged. "I have seen so many truckloads of the dead pass through my street, which is on the way to the main hospital mortuary," Jos resident Phil Nwachukwu told IRIN. "The number must be over 100 dead."