World News 11-09-2001 Religious Violence Claims 196 Lives In Three Days who: Muslim rioters what: Burn down church after Christians run riot where: Nigeria when: Yesterday snippet: "Clashes between Christian and Muslim youths in Nigeria have left at least 165 dead and about 1,000 injured," reports The Telegraph. In the Christian city of Jos, burnt-out cars litter the streets after three days of rioting, writes Dan Isaacs. "Terrified Jos residents described gangs setting up roadblocks and pulling people out of vehicles to kill them," he says, "and house-to-house searches by youths armed with machetes, clubs and guns." "Charred bodies lay in the wreckage of hundreds of burnt-out vehicles, many still smouldering," says The Times, "as troops and police patrolled the streets, collected the dead and sought to disarm mobs roaming the suburbs". Weapons confiscated from the mobs included "steak knives, pickaxes, swords and clubs bristling with nails". Just as the violence began to subside, a 5,000-strong Muslim mob was reported to have attacked and burned a church in Kano, a city in the predominately Muslim north. The Independent`s Anne Penketh says the rioters wanted to "avenge the deaths of their Muslim brethren," although the state police commissioner tells the BBC: "What happened here has nothing to do with the clashes in Jos." [... more]

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