News
Another 14
Killed in Restive Plateau, Full Scale War Underway
At least 14 people have been
killed in spiraling violence between Christian and Muslim youths
in central Nigeria's volatile Plateau state since Sunday night,
authorities said on Monday.
The latest deaths bring the
total number of people killed -- in violence between gangs and
each other or security forces -- in the past week to at least
50.
Plateau state spokesman Yiljap
Abraham took journalists to see the bodies from two attacks, one
in the village of Zakaleu, where 10 people were killed, and the
other near a village called Kuru. Several houses had also been
burned down.
"People are just using this
situation to commit crime," Abraham told Reuters. "They are
hacking people up, stealing their motorcycles, breaking into
shops, looting, killing. These are acts of criminality. It has
nothing to do with religion."
The cycle of violence in the
ethnically and religiously-mixed area started when Christian
youths attacked some Muslims last Monday as they gathered to
celebrate the end of Ramadan in the city of Jos, capital of
Plateau state, the military said.
Youths hacked a family of eight
to death on Sunday morning, local officials said. On Sunday
night, gangs in three vans pulled up to the village of Zakaleu
and attacked residents, said Timothy Buba, chairman of northern
Jos local council.
"Seven lives were lost. People
and the houses were set on fire and even from the distance, you
can see some smoke," Buba said.
"We... believe that the attack
was carried out with the sole aim that the people of this
community would retaliate... and provoke reprisals without end."
Plateau state straddles
the "Middle Belt" between Nigeria's mostly Muslim north and
largely Christian south.
Nigeria has a roughly equal
Christian-Muslim population and more than 200 ethnic groups live
side-by-side in the West African country largely peacefully, but
periodic violence flares up in the Middle Belt.
The tensions in Plateau are
rooted in fierce competition for local political power and
control of fertile farmlands, tensions which local government
policies have done little to calm.
The latest unrest is an
unwelcome challenge for President Goodluck Jonathan, who is
already dealing with near-daily attacks in the northeast by the
Islamist sect Boko Haram.
Authorities have blamed
the group for an Aug. 26 bombing of U.N. offices in Abuja that
killed 23 people.
REUTERS
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