Update: Over 500 Killed. 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. A doctor at a hospital in Jos told Reuters news agency that victims had been cut by machetes and burnt. In January hundreds of people were killed in riots in the city, which lies between the mainly Muslim north and the more Christian south.
Ethnic and religious riots also broke out in 2008, killing hundreds.
Military deployed
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.
The military, which already has a presence in Jos, has sent troops to the village.
Analysts say the attack seems to be in reprisal for the clashes between Christians and Muslims in January, which claimed the lives of at least 200 people and displaced thousands of others.
Hundreds of people have fled from Jos in the aftermath of the fighting, the Red Cross says.
Robin Waudo, a Red Cross spokesman, told the BBC his volunteers were assisting people wounded in the latest fighting.
“We know that late this morning there was some fighting in the south part of the city and it seems like there are reprisal attacks from what happened a few weeks ago,” he said.
“Right now, the fighting has calmed down and the military have been deployed to come and control the security situation.”
Another Red Cross official in the nearby state of Bauchi said more than 600 people had fled into makeshift camps there to escape the violence.
VANGUARD –
Over 500 people mostly women and children were today killed by Fulani herdsmen on reprisal attacks. At least 45 children including toddlers were among those hacked to death, gunned down or roasted in their abodes which were torched by the marauders at about 2.30 am.
Most hit was Dogon Na Hauwa village where most of the killings were done and over 75 houses were razed but nearby Ratsat and Jeji villages were not spared.
A victim, Musa Gyang who spoke to journalists where he is receiving treatment at Plateau Specialist Hospital said they were woken up by gun shots in the middle of the night and before they knew what was happening they saw their houses torched and as they ran out they were attacked with gun shots or machete.
Journalists could not help but break down in tears as they saw piles of corpses mostly women and children some of them with heads severed.
The Commissioner for Information Mr. Gregory Yenlong who briefed journalists later said about 500 corpses would be given a mass burial adding that security has been beefed up to contains the situation.
He described the attack on the Berom villages as a kind of ethnic cleansing saying some families were completely wiped out.
He confirmed that the attackers were suspected to be Fulanis who came on foot from elsewhere to beat security but call for calm as government intensifies efforts to track down the attackers.
The Gbong Gwom Jos, Da Gyang Buba who visited the area also lamented the gruesome murder of innocent people describing it as man’s inhumanity to man.
He said he received information of planned attacks on villages and informed the security agencies appropriately wondering why the attacks still happened.
Addressing the survivors, he appealed for calm warning against any form of reprisals.
“I am deeply sad. We can’t continue like this; we are not animals. We’ll go back and discuss with government even up to Abuja and make our case. Let’s Have patience. There is no alternative to patience and don’t let us take laws into our hands. Do not do anything that would aggravate the situation”, he told them.