Mail Foreign Service 9th March 2010
Nigerian villagers wailed in the streets as dump trucks carried hundreds of bodies past burned-out homes towards a mass grave.
This was the scene of insurmountable grief after rioters armed with machetes slaughtered more than 500 people in a revenge attack following religious clashes near Nigeria’s city of Jos.
The killers had shown no mercy. They didn’t spare women and children, or even a four-day-old baby, from their machetes. In one area alone, five babies and 28 children aged five or less were killed.
Rubber-gloved workers pulled ever-smaller bodies from the dump truck and tossed them into the mass grave.
A crowd began singing a hymn with the refrain, ‘Jesus said I am the way to heaven.’ As the grave filled, the grieving crowd sang: ‘Jesus, show me the way.’
The violence in three mostly Christian villages appeared to be reprisal attacks following the January unrest in Jos – when most of the victims were Muslims.
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Burying the dead: People gather at a mass burial of their kinsmen killed during a religious crisis in the village of Dogo NahawaÂ
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There is a long history of local tension between Muslims and Christians. Mass burials for the victims will take place later today.
The bodies of the dead lined dusty streets in three villages south of the regional capital of Jos.
One young victim appeared to have been scalped, while others had severed hands and feet. One woman victim in the morgue appeared to have been stripped below the waist, but later covered by a strip of black cloth.
Jos has been under a dusk-til-dawn curfew enforced by the military since January’s religious-based violence.
Rioting in September 2001 killed more than 1,000 people and Muslim-Christian battles killed up to 700 people in 2004. More than 300 residents died during a similar uprising in 2008.
Acting President Goodluck Jonathan said security agencies would be stationed along Plateau state’s borders to keep outsiders from coming in with more weapons and fighters.
‘(We will) undertake strategic initiatives to confront and defeat these roving bands of killers,’ he said in a statement.
‘While it is too early to state categorically what is responsible for this renewed wave of violence, we want to inform Nigerians that the security services are on top of the situation.’
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More than 600 people fled to a makeshift camp that still held victims from January’s violence, said Red Cross official Adamu Abubakar.
He expected more to come, putting an even bigger strain on the already limited humanitarian aid for those fleeing the violence.
The killings represent the latest religious violence in an area once known as Nigeria’s top tourist destination, adding to the tally of thousands already killed in the last decade in the name of religious and political ambitions.
Jos lies in Nigeria’s ‘middle belt,’ where dozens of ethnic groups mingle in a band of fertile and hotly contested land separating the Muslim north from the predominantly Christian south.
In Jos, Muslims have complained about being denied jobs and other benefits by the Christian-dominated government.
However, many Muslims also operate shops and businesses in a nearby town where the tourist trade has dried up and the surrounding tin mines have been abandoned, stoking fears for Christians about retaliation from Muslim neighbours.
In Dogo Nahawa, a village three miles south of Jos, residents said the dead included a four-day-old infant.
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No mercy: Victims of the violence lay on the dusty ground in Jos, Nigeria after rioters armed with machetes slaughtered more than 500 people overnight
Those who survived claimed their attackers shouted at them in Hausa and Fulani – two local languages used by Muslims.
Yenlong, the state government spokesman, also said police were seeking to arrest Saleh Bayari, the regional leader of the Fulanis, because Bayari’s comments incited the attack. He offered no other details.
But the chairman of the local Fulani organization denied that his people were involved in the attack.
Nigerian military units began surrounding the affected villages Sunday afternoon, Waubo, the Red Cross spokesman, said.
He said the agency did not know how many people may have died in the fighting but workers have been sent to local morgues and hospitals to check.