Jos, March 08: More than 300 people, mostly women and children, were killed, in a new outburst of deadly sectarian violence near Nigeria’s central city of Jos.
“Reports reaching us indicated marauding bands launched a flurry of attacks on certain communities in the state, causing considerable death and injury,” Acting President Goodluck Jonathan’s office said in a statement cited by Reuters.
Witnesses said machete-wielding gangs attacked the Dogo Nahawa village near Jos, shooting into the air and slashing people fleeing their homes with machetes.
“Over a hundred people have been killed most of them women and children,” a government official told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on condition of anonymity.
“Some of the children are less than one year old.”
But a Reuters witness counted more than 120 bodies most lying in Dogo Nahawa.
Some of the bodies, including those of women and children, were charred, others had machete wounds across their faces.
Aid workers said some had been shot.
A Red Cross official said at least two other nearby communities were also targeted in the villages of Ratsat and Zot, all less than 10 kilometers from Jos and home to members of the Berom ethnic group.
The Nigerian government ordered the security forces to hunt down perpetrators of the massacre.
“The Acting President … has directed that the security services undertake strategic initiatives to confront and defeat these roving bands of killers,” Jonathan’s office said.
Rivalry
Traumatized residents have accused the security forces of turning a blind eye to the massacre.
“The operation started around 3:00 am (0200 GMT) and lasted till 6:00 am and there were gunshots, but we did not see a single policeman,” said Peter Gyang, who lost a wife and two children.
“We no longer have confidence in the security agencies.”
Residents blamed clan rivalry for the deadly massacre.
“I believe the attacks were a reprisal of the killings of four pastoralists in the (neighbouring) Kura village … area some two weeks ago when a Fulani settlement was attacked by ethnic Berom youths,” Yusuf Alkali, a Fulani resident in Jos, told AFP.
“The Beroms suspected the Fulani of stealing some herds of cattle. This forced the Fulani to flee the settlement and I believe it is the same Fulani pastoralists that mobilized to launch a counter-attack.”
The killings came less than two months after hundreds of people were killed in sectarian clashes in Jos in January.
In November 2008, hundreds of people were killed in two days of violence triggered by a disputed election.
Hundreds were also killed in ethnic-religious fighting in Jos in 2001.
Nigeria, one of the world’s most religiously committed nations, is divided between a Muslim north and a Christian south.
Muslims and Christians, who constitute 55 and 40 percent of Nigeria’s 140 million population respectively, have lived in peace for the most part.
But ethnic and religious tensions have bubbled for years, fuelled by decades of resentment between indigenous groups, mostly Christian or animist, who are vying for control of fertile farmlands with migrants and settlers from the Hausa-speaking Muslim north.
-Agencies