Print
Mar. 7th (BBC News) Scores of people have been reported killed in suspected religious clashes near the central Nigerian city of Jos.
Witnesses said corpses were piled up in the village of Dogo-Nahawa, a few kilometres (miles) south of Jos.
Acting President Goodluck Jonathan has put security forces in central Nigeria on full alert.
In January hundreds of people were killed in riots in Jos, which lies between the mainly Muslim north and the more Christian south.
Ethnic and religious riots also broke out in 2008, killing hundreds.
The attack happened before dawn on Sunday morning when gangs of men descended on the village and attacked people with machetes, reports say.
A resident of Dogo-Nahawa said the attackers had fired guns as they entered the village.
"The shooting was just meant to bring people from their houses and then when people came out they started cutting them with machetes," Peter Jang told Reuters.
An unnamed government official told AFP at least 100 people had been killed - most of them women and children.
Another eyewitness told the BBC he saw scores of dead bodies including those of children.
A doctor at a hospital in Jos told Reuters news agency that victims had been cut by machetes and burnt.
The military, which already has a presence in Jos, has sent troops to the village.
"The Acting President has placed all the security forces in Plateau and neighbouring states on red alert so as to stem any cross-border dimensions to this latest conflict," Mr Jonathan's office said in a statement quoted by Reuters news agency.
He also ordered those behind the violence to be found.
Read more...
