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Muslims seek Nigeria clash probe


Thousands fled Yelwa during the violence
A spokesman for Nigeria's Muslims has called for a judicial enquiry into clashes in the central Plateau State, which claimed at least 67 lives.
Justice Abdulkadir Orire told the BBC that some 200 Muslims were killed when they were attacked by Christian militiamen with machine guns.

Some 600 armed police have been sent to the town of Yelwa to restore order.

A curfew has been imposed in Yelwa and the security forces have been told to shoot trouble-makers on sight.

Justice Orire, a retired judge, also urged the Plateau State governor to clarify reports that he told non-indigenous people to leave.

BBC Africa analyst Elizabeth Blunt says that "'non-indigenes" means the Muslim community, even though it may be 100 years since their families settled in the area.

Plateau State police commissioner Innocent Iluzuoke told the BBC that the police had counted 67 dead but it was impossible to say exactly how many people had been killed because townspeople had already started burying their dead.

'Revenge'

Mutilated and charred corpses were still lying on the main street of the remote market town on Tuesday, reports a Reuters correspondent in the town.

Almost every house lining the main street of Yelwa was burned and some were still smouldering. A mosque was also destroyed, Reuters reports.




Analysis: Spiral of violence
Thousands of Muslims lined the roadside chanting religious slogans and vowing revenge on the attackers.

"Allah will avenge us. The pagans have killed our people," said one man.

In Christian villages near Yelwa, hundreds of youths were sitting on the roadside, apparently awaiting further violence, Reuters says.

"In view of the inhuman recent hostilities, government has decided to impose and dusk-to-dawn curfew in Yelwa town," Plateau State deputy governor Michael Bothmang told reporters in Jos.

"Government has in addition ordered the security personnel to shoot on sight any person or group found fomenting trouble, as well as the immediate dismantling of all illegal roadblocks mounted by the warriors," he said.

House-to-house

Eyewitnesses told the BBC that several thousand men from four predominantly Christian ethnic groups surrounded Yelwa on Sunday.

Some of the men wore uniforms, while others were stripped to the waist and painted black.

They carried what a crowd of townspeople described as sophisticated weapons.

Then they went from house to house killing whoever they could find.

Fighting for land

Justice Orire, secretary general of the Nigerian Muslim umbrella organisation Jama'atu Nasril Islam, asked where the Christian militia had got machine guns from, if they had not had outside backing.

He said Muslims from Yelwa reported that their cattle were being taken, or prevented from grazing, and they felt there was an attempt to get them to leave the area, even before this week's events.

In February, 48 Christians were killed by armed Muslim Fulanis in Yelwa after they had taken refuge in a church.

Muslim Fulani cattle herders and Christian Tarok farmers have been clashing in central Nigeria for more than two months.

They are fighting mainly over land and cattle. Thousands of people are reported to have fled the fighting.

In 2001 more than 1,000 people died in religious clashes in the state capital of Jos