Clashes bring horror to Nigerian village AMINU ABUBAKAR

January 23, 2010 - 7:09AM

AFP

Scores of residents of a central Nigerian village of Kuru Karama were hacked to death and their bodies stuffed into wells in a wave of inter-religious violence, survivors say.
Mud-and-wattle houses were still smouldering on Friday from the Muslim-Christian violence which spilled over into this farming village on Tuesday from its epicentre in the state capital, Jos, 30 km away.

Survivors in the predominantly Muslim enclave blamed the massacres on their Christian neighbours and the police.

Muslim aid workers backed by a military escort combed the village for corpses on Friday, after pulling dozens of decomposing bodies from drinking water wells.
Not a single building in the village had escaped being torched in the violence, including the mosque. A handwritten signpost declared the blackened remains of one building to be the police station.
Except for the cackle of hens and bleating of goats, Kuru Karama was eerily quiet on Friday as the aid team picked their way through the blood-spattered dusty streets, and their litter of mangled cooking pots, charred mattresses, clothing and corn grains. Most of its 3,000 people had fled, but many were dead.

"So far we have retrieved 62 bodies but many more are still in the wells and I'm afraid we may have to sand-fill them because the bodies have decomposed so bad that the flesh disintegrates when we try to bring them out," the leader of the aid team, Ibrahim Tanimu, told AFP. Behind him, his men piled bodies into waiting vans.

The corpses bore gunshot wounds and deep slashes, an AFP reporter with the convoy witnessed.

"We are taking them back to Jos for burial," Tanimu said as he ducked to examine a mangled pair of loudspeakers outside the mosque with its blown-off zinc roof and soot-darkened yellow walls.

"I lost 10 members of my family including my father and brother Mohammed, who arrived a week ago from Ukraine where he worked with the Nigerian embassy," said Adamu Musa, who broke down when the body of his 73 year-old father was pulled from the water well of his house.

"I was in Abuja when my late brother phoned me telling me the village was under attack, and at one point the line went dead. I believe it was at that moment that he was killed," said Musa, a bus driver, his chest heaving with sobs.

The number of people killed is still being established. Religious leaders and paramedics put the death toll in Jos alone around 300.

"We can't say for now how many people were killed," village chief Umar Baza told AFP as he led the aid team around. He said some people escaped the attackers only to be later ambushed and killed.
Armed Christian youths were backed by local police when they attacked the village on Tuesday, hours after a meeting of faith leaders aimed at defusing tensions as the violence spread south from Jos, said Baza.

He said when news of the fighting in Jos reached the village he summoned a meeting of both Christian and Muslim leaders, which was also attended by police.

"We resolved to work together to fend off any external attack on our village," he said adding but hours later "surprisingly ,  we came under attack by Christian youths armed with guns and machetes. We tried to repel them but they overpowered us with guns and this is the result," Baza said, blinking back tears.

He turned towards his Christian neighbours who stood in clusters outside their homes 300 metres away watching the aid volunteers piling bodies into vans.

"The police in the village that were supposed to protect everybody who took part in the killing. The same police officer who mediated in the peace meeting was the one leading the attackers," he alleged.

Vice President Goodluck Johathan has since tasked the army with the region's security, in order to prevent a repeat of the violence.

Escorted by a tank, the 25-vehicle convoy had only begun rolling back towards Jos, when it ground to a halt, volunteers jumping down to haul five more bodies out of an irrigation canal.

© 2010 AFP


Source: http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/clashes-bring-horror-to-nigerian-village-20100123-mr1n.html

even the christians have started retaliating.

I thank Jos Christain, never allow terrorist Islamic people to have peace in Jos.

Is it dat the fg were sleeping wen all dis crisis is escalating? Eva since dis crisis started no reasonable effort has been done 2 subdue it. Dis country don tire me self!

kkkossy:

Is it dat the fg were sleeping wen all dis crisis is escalating? Eva since dis crisis started no reasonable effort has been done 2 subdue it. Dis country don tire me self!

They lifted the cerfew right away, and all it did was escalate things.

hmmmmm. . . . ONE Nigeria. . . here we go again.

@wilywily and all please Let's just take a break cos no matter what has been done to me or anyone else this is an attrocious act that reeks of inhumanity. Let's not dehumanize ourselves.