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Thousands shelter in barracks after Nigeria unrest
Tue Jul 28, 2009 10:18am EDT
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By Ibrahim Mshelizza
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Thousands of Nigerians sheltered in barracks in the northern city of Maiduguri on Tuesday after days of clashes involving Muslim rebels which residents said had killed at least 100 people.
Sporadic gunfire rang out overnight in the city, the capital of Borno state, despite a curfew after clashes in which members of a local Islamic group burned churches, a police station and a prison and set off petrol bombs near residential areas.
The rioters are supporters of a radical Islamic preacher opposed to Western education, who critics say has whipped some students and illiterate, jobless youths into an anti-establishment frenzy in recent years.
Residents said youths armed with machetes, knives, bows and arrows, locally made hunting rifles and home-made explosives had attacked police buildings and anyone resembling a police officer or government official, causing hundreds of families to flee.
"When we heard shooting and saw people running we just packed the family and joined them," said Sunny Nwankwo, a journalist who fled to one of two barracks in the city sheltering thousands of civilians.
Streets around the main market and in some residential areas in the Lamisula neighborhood were deserted on Tuesday.
"I saw more than five big police trucks loaded with dead bodies ... The bodies are certainly more than 100," Maiduguri resident Gana Marari told Reuters by telephone.
"We kept hearing sporadic gunshots and explosions despite the curfew ... but from the look of things the police and the military are in control of the situation because since this morning there has been relative calm," he said.
The violence began in Bauchi state on Sunday after the arrest of some members of an Islamic group called Boko Haram, which opposes Western education and wants a wider adoption of Islamic Sharia law across Africa's most populous nation.
It then spread to the states of Borno, Kano and Yobe, all located in Nigeria's Muslim-dominated north.
The government has estimated 55 people have been killed but security sources and residents say the toll is much higher. One Nigerian newspaper with reporters around the region put the death toll at over 150 in Borno and Kano states alone.
Armed police manned roadblocks and patrolled Kano's streets on Tuesday but the city was calm. Soldiers and police enforced a night time curfew in Bauchi but there was no fresh unrest.
JOBLESS YOUTHS
The four northern states are among the 12 of Nigeria's 36 states that started a stricter enforcement of sharia in 2000 -- a decision that has alienated sizeable Christian minorities and sparked bouts of sectarian violence that killed thousands.
Maiduguri is the home of Mohammed Yusuf, the leader of Boko Haram -- which means "educated is prohibited" -- and the city appears to have borne the brunt of the unrest. Continued...
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