Hundreds flee after mob kills seven policemen

Hundreds of people fled a rural town in Nigeria’s northern Katsina State fearing reprisal attacks after a mob killed seven policemen, residents said on Monday.

The incident in Danja, a rural trading town, occurred on Friday after a scuffle between a policeman and a local resident escalated into a fight. In the ensuing chaos, the seven officers and three local people were killed. "Most people in Danja fled fearing revenge attacks by the police,” Samaila Usman, a trader who escaped from the town, told IRIN.

Witnesses said over 200 armed policemen had taken positions on the outskirts of the town since Sunday, but a police source said the reinforcements were there to ensure there were no further outbreaks of violence.

Similar incidents in which policemen or soldiers were killed in communal unrest in Nigeria attracted reprisal attacks by security forces. In October 2001, more than 200 people were killed and seven villages razed in central region Benue State, by soldiers in apparent reprisal for the killing of 19 officers by Tiv militiamen. Two years earlier, the town of Odi in the southern Niger delta was destroyed by soldiers after armed militants killed 12 policemen. Hundreds were killed.

Meanwhile, more displaced people arrived in the southeastern Benue State, as fresh threats of reprisals were reportedly issued in Tiv settlements in Taraba State, by the Jukun with whom they have been at loggerheads.

The special assistant on media affairs to Benue State governor, Beckie Orpin, was quoted by the Guardian newspaper, a Lagos daily as saying on Saturday, that at least 1,000 people had moved into the state from Taraba, after being given an ultimatum to either leave or witness another violent killing.