NIGERIA: Rioting in Nigeria sparked by Muslim anger over a newspaper article on the Miss World beauty pageant spread to the country's capital, Abuja, and to new areas of the northern city of Kaduna, already the scene of over 100 deaths, yesterday.
Police swiftly dispersed the Abuja protests, but as a strict curfew began in Kaduna, a Red Cross spokesman warned that the death toll was expected to increase as clashes between Muslims and Christians had shifted to four new areas. Thousands of civilians left Kaduna, the streets littered with corpses, in order to seek shelter from the fighting in police barracks.
Meanwhile in Abuja, Muslims stormed out of the national mosque after Friday prayers and set fire to cars, including at least one police vehicle, witnesses said.
Paramilitary police dispersed the protesters with tear gas and made several arrests in the centre of the modern capital, which is usually spared Nigeria's endemic mob violence.
"After prayers they came from the mosque like warmongers, chanting their 'Allahu Akbar' song. They started smashing cars," an Abuja market trader said.
On Wednesday, youths burned down a newspaper office in Kaduna in protest at a "blasphemous" article which suggested the Prophet Muhammad would have married a Miss World contestant.
The pageant is due to take place in Abuja on December 7th and the presence of 90 young women contestants in the country during the holy month of Ramadan has offended many Muslims.
But since they started, the riots in Kaduna have degenerated into a street battle between parts of the city's rival Muslim and Christian communities.
Similar clashes there two years ago left more than 2,000 people dead. The Red Cross has so far counted over 100 dead and 521 injured in an early toll yesterday, but is expecting many more.
"The security situation in Kaduna is extremely unstable," Nigerian Red Cross spokeman Mr Patrick Bawa said. "We have been told the situation is spreading to other parts of the city and the state outside Kaduna."
Miss World organisers said that their programme of events would continue. - (AFP)