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Security Council Fleeing Nigerians Killed in Riots
over Islamic LawBy Michael Dynes
Times (London)
February 23, 2000
Corpses littered the streets in Nigeria's northern city of Kaduna yesterday after fierce clashes between Christians and Muslims sparked by a demand for the imposition of Islamic law.
Troops were deployed after police opened fire indiscriminately when sectarian gangs attacked each other with sticks and cutlasses. More than 20 people are reported to have been killed and hundreds injured in the unrest, which began on Monday during a protest by tens of thousands of Christians, witnesses said. With a night curfew in force, residents said yesterday that many houses were still burning and gunshots could be heard all over the city. On the main road leading to Abuja, the capital, bodies could be seen among the wreckage of buses and cars in which people were killed as they tried to flee.
"The situation is desperate," one police officer said.
Ethnic and religious tensions have risen alarmingly since President Obasanjo, a born-again Christian from the mostly Christian south, took office last May after nearly 16 years of military dictatorship by soldiers from the largely Muslim north. They have prompted new fears over the stability of Africa's most populous state. The President has been reluctant to challenge the Muslim community for fear of further alienating the north.
The full implementation of Sharia began in the poverty-stricken state of Zamfara last month. Islamic courts can now order amputations or beheadings for serious crimes, and public lashings for anyone caught drinking alcohol in public. Several other states, including Kaduna, where the Muslim majority is slight, are preparing to follow suit.
Riots in northern Nigeria between Muslim Hausa-speakers and Christian Ibo immigrants in 1967 helped to trigger the secession bid by the mainly Ibo region of Biafra. At least one million people died in the resulting civil war.
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