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Deadly riots reported in Nigeria
By GLENN McKENZIE
Associated Press Writer
10/13/2001
LAGOS, Nigeria — Bands of Muslims and Christians rioted Saturday in the streets of the northern city of Kano, burning places of worship and looting stores and businesses. At least 13 people were killed, police said.
The latest outbreak of religious violence in northern Nigeria, where Muslim-Christian fighting has killed thousands since last year, kindled already heated emotions after Muslim fundamentalists clashed Friday with police during a street protest against U.S.-led airstrikes on Afghanistan.
Police Commissioner Yakubu Bello Uba confirmed that 13 people were killed Saturday, including five rioters shot to death by police. He said he had ordered police to shoot protesters and combatants "on sight.''
There were unconfirmed reports of many more dead. The bodies of eight people lay on the streets of Sabon Gari, a neighborhood in the northern part of Kano, an overwhelmingly Muslim city some 430 miles northeast of Nigeria's commercial capital, Lagos.
Dozens of shops and businesses, including several newspaper offices, were looted and destroyed, police and witnesses said. Three churches were at least partially burned and a mosque was also torched.
More than 100 people were arrested, Bello Uba said by telephone.
Ibrahim Gwawargwa, a spokesman for the Kano state government, blamed the rioting on "hoodlums'' who, he said, looted shops owned by "Muslims and Christians alike.''
"We have not found any religious aspect to this,'' he said.
Yet witnesses told of groups of Christian and Muslim rioters screaming religious slogans as they attacked and chased bystanders.
On Galadima Road, a main thoroughfare, a mob chanted "Allahu akbar'' — "God is great'' — as they burned down buildings, including the offices of several Nigerian newspapers, said Nathaniel Inku, a journalist with the national daily Vanguard newspaper. Inku's office was among those burned.
Some Muslim rioters carried posters of Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, witnesses said.
A group of high school students on their way to take their university-entrance exams clashed with youths who shouted religious Muslim slogans, two witnesses said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Some residents sought shelter in police stations while many were holed up inside their homes.
By nightfall, a tense calm was restored to the city as armored vehicles filled with soldiers and police cruised otherwise deserted streets, enforcing a 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. curfew.
On Friday, police fired tear gas to break up a protest by hundreds of angry Muslim youths chanting "Americans are infidels'' and "Leave bin Laden alone.'' Several people were injured and three vehicles, including a police truck, were burned.
The U.S. began its military campaign against Afghanistan on Oct. 7 after the ruling Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden and his lieutenants.
Protesters said Friday's rally was organized by a group called Muslim Revolutionaries, believed to be an offshoot of a fundamentalist movement led by Sheikh Ibrahim El-Zak Zaky, a well-known politician and cleric who was jailed in the 1990s by Nigeria's military junta for making illegal radio broadcasts advocating Nigeria's transform to an Islamic state.
Nigeria, with 120 million people, is divided into an overwhelmingly Muslim north and a largely Christian south. Religious tensions have increased since a dozen northern states, including Kano, began imposing Islamic law, or Shariah, last year. Islamic courts in these states have ordered the hands of thieves amputated and several women and girls have been publicly flogged for alleged sexual indiscretions.
In September, at least 165 people were killed in the city of Jos.