| Posted to contrast with the piece on the same news that Fred posted. Read this Irish Times version and you'd never know the religious dimension of the problem. Maybe that's why the people in Europe (and the U.S.) don't know about what's happening -- the MSM doesn't tell them... |
Clashes between rival ethnic groups have killed at least 30 people in eastern Nigeria's Taraba state since they erupted yesterday, police said.
Members of the Jukun ethnic group were marching through the small commercial town of Wukari to a funeral when an argument broke out with local Hausa and Fulani youths, which quickly degenerated into pitched battles with guns and machetes. Attackers also set fire to around 30 houses, police said.
"Now we are in full control, although the crisis claimed 30 lives," police spokesman for Taraba state Joseph Kwaji said, adding that 40 suspects had been arrested.
Taraba state is part of Nigeria's volatile "Middle Belt", where its largely Christian south and mostly Muslim north meet.
| That's where they 'meet', you see, that's all. Much like where the suburbs meet the city, it's just another line on a map. But the violence in the Middle Belt has nothing to do with religion, no sir Senator... |
The Middle Belt often sees violence between semi-nomadic, cattle-keeping communities like the Fulani and settled farming peoples like the Jukun over land disputes. Communal violence has also flared this year in Plateau state, which borders Taraba. |