NIGERIA: Christian mobs rampaged through a southern Nigerian city yesterday, burning mosques and killing several people in an outbreak of anti-Muslim violence that followed deadly protests against caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad over the weekend.
Residents and witnesses in the southern, predominantly Christian, city of Onitsha said several Muslims with origins in the north were beaten to death by mobs that also burnt two mosques there.
"The mosque at the main market has been burnt, and I've counted at least six dead bodies on the streets," Izzy Uzor, an Onitsha resident and businessman, said. "The whole town is in a frenzy, and people are running in all directions."
The violence appeared to be in reprisal for anti-Christian violence on Saturday in the mostly Muslim northern city of Maiduguri in which thousands of Muslims protesting at caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad attacked Christians and burned churches, killing at least 18 people.
Police and government officials were not immediately available for comment.
Nigeria, Africa's most populous country of more than 130 million people, is roughly divided between a predominantly Muslim north and a mainly Christian south. Thousands of people have died in religious violence in Nigeria since 2000.
Saturday's protest over the cartoons of Prophet Muhammad in Maiduguri marked the first violent demonstrations over the issue in Nigeria. Police say at least 18 people, most of them Christians, died, and 30 churches were burned down. The Christian Association of Nigeria said at least 50 people were killed in the violence.