A Muslim rampage last week in this town [Tudun Wada Dankadai] in the northern state of Kano resulted in the killing of 10 Christians and the destruction of nine churches, according to eyewitnesses. Another 61 people were injured and more than 500 displaced in the September 28 disturbance, touched off when Muslim students of Government College-Tudun Wada Dankadai, a public high school, claimed that a Christian student had drawn a cartoon of IslamÂ’s prophet, Muhammad, on the wall of the schoolÂ’s mosque. Christian students said no one saw the alleged cartoon and that no one in the tiny minority group of Christians would have dared such a feat, especially during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. Of the student population of 1,500 at the high school, only 14 are Christians. Seven of them live on campus.
Iliya Adamu, an 18-year-old student at the school, told Compass [Direct] that he had been preparing to go to class when a group of Muslim students stormed into his dorm and began to beat him. “I was surprised that they were beating me without telling what I did,” Adamu said. “I asked to know what was happening, and they claimed that one Christian student had gone to their mosque to draw a cartoon of Muhammad. In spite of my denying the act, they kept beating me.”
Adamu said he saw them beating a Christian classmate, Sule LaÂ’azaru. Sensing that he would be killed, he ran to the principalÂ’s office to take refuge. Soon the remaining Christian students escaped and joined him in the principalÂ’s office. Sensing danger, Muslim teachers locked the Christian students in the principalÂ’s office. They were kept there for about 30 minutes before the school principal, Alhaji Garba Wajume, arrived at the chaotic scene. |