LAGOS, 23 November 2002 — At least 105 people were confirmed dead and over 500 wounded in riots in northern Nigeria triggered by Muslim fury over an article on the Miss World pageant, the Nigerian Red Cross said yesterday.
Rioting spread to the country’s capital Abuja and to new areas of the northern city of Kaduna late yesterday.
Police swiftly dispersed the Abuja protests, but as a strict 6 p.m. (1700 GMT) curfew began in Kaduna, a Red Cross spokesman warned that the death toll was expected to increase as clashes between Muslims and Christians have shifted to four new areas.
Nigeria’s state security agency said it had arrested and was holding the editor and reporter responsible for the article that triggered the bloody riots.
The fighting began on Wednesday when Muslim youths burned down a newspaper office in protest at a “blasphemous” article against Prophet Muhammad (pbuh).
The president of the Nigerian Red Cross, Emmanuel Ijewere, told Reuters the latest tally came from his field workers in the northern city of Kaduna where rioters have looted shops and burned churches and mosques. Soldiers are in the streets.
“The 105 are identifiable deaths,” Ijewere said by phone from the capital Abuja. He suggested the toll could rise further, saying: “There are some houses that have not been entered. It is possible that there are injured in these houses.”
An AFP correspondent in the flash point city found thousands of civilians fleeing streets littered with corpses in order to seek shelter from the fighting in police barracks.
Authorities have clamped a 24-hour curfew over the volatile city where thousands died in sectarian riots two years ago that spread to other parts of northern Nigeria.
AFP journalists found the center of the sprawling city tense with a massive security presence and burned debris from earlier fighting in the streets.
Federal officials were in Kaduna for talks with religious leaders, who have appealed for calm following three days of bloody disturbances, state spokesman Muktar Sirajo said.
An AFP reporter saw soldiers seizing weapons from travelers arriving by bus from the larger city of Kano to the north.
Since the fighting started in Kaduna the riots have degenerated into a street battle between parts of the city’s rival Muslim and Christian communities, local agencies said yesterday.
Earlier, Shehu Sani, head of the Kaduna-based Civil Rights Congress, told AFP by telephone that observers from his agency had seen 50 dead and many injured in various parts of the city.
“The situation has further aggravated, there have been more burnings of churches and mosques,” he said. “Initially the attacks were mostly by Muslims, but now Christians are retaliating.” (Agencies)
