Police assert control after Yoruba, Hausa clash in Lagos

Under orders to shoot criminals on sight, police in Lagos reasserted control in troubled parts of the city on Friday at the end of a second day of violence between Yoruba and Hausa traders and halted a looting spree by city hoodlums, according to news reports. “We cannot allow this country to be taken over by hoodlums and criminals,” President Olusegun Obasanjo said on nationwide television on Thursday. He said 27 bodies had been counted but the BBC reported on Friday the death toll could reach 50. The Hausa and the Yoruba are the two largest and most politically powerful groups in Nigeria. At least 100 people died when they last clashed in July, in the southwest and in Kano, the biggest city in Muslim northern Nigeria.