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| Africa Subsaharan |
| Eight killed as Christian village attacked in Nigeria |
| 2010-07-18 |
| Muslims attacked a Christian village in central Nigeria on Saturday, killing eight people with machetes and burning seven houses and a church in fresh religious violence, Lieutenant Colonel Kingsley Umoh, an army spokesman, said on Saturday. The attack followed clashes in eastern Nigeria earlier in the week that also killed eight and left six mosques and a church burnt. "It's true eight people were killed," the spokesman said. An AFP correspondent saw the bodies, as well as the burnt houses and church in Mazzah village, near the city of Jos. Umoh said Fulani Muslims entered Mazzah between 1:30am and 5am, shooting sporadically in the air to lure sleeping residents outside their homes before they were killed. "Seven people were killed instantly with machetes while three others were seriously injured. One of them died on the way to the hospital," he said. He said troop reinforcements had been deployed to Mazzah, some 14 kilometres from Jos, the capital of central Plateau State, to prevent the violence from escalating. The village was calm on Saturday afternoon, but some residents were seen leaving for Jos out of fears for their safety. A senior state official, Gyang Pwajok, described the overnight attack as an act of terrorism. Plateau State lies in the middle belt between the Muslim north and the Christian south. Local rights groups say 1,500 people have died in inter-communal violence in the Jos region since the start of this year alone. Some observers say the violence results from religion being exploited in the struggle for local power. |
| Posted by:Fred |