Thirteen people died in clashes between Christian youths and Muslims celebrating the Eid-al-Fitr holiday in the Nigerian city of Jos on Monday, the army and a local hospital said yesterday.
Gangs of armed youths attacked Muslims as they gathered to celebrate the last day of Ramadan, also burning cars and leading some to fight back, witnesses and the military said.
The city, straddling the “Middle Belt” between Nigeria’s mostly Muslim north and the largely Christian south, is a flash point for ethnic and sectarian tensions between the two faiths.
Ishaya Pam, chief medical director of Jos University Teaching Hospital, told journalists 13 bodies of people killed in the violence had been transferred to its mortuary.
“I’ve confirmed the death toll of yesterday’s attacks,” Captain Charles Eckeocha, spokesman of the Special Task Force charged with maintaining order in Jos, said.
“In addition, 60 vehicles including motorcycles were burned, and one soldier was also critically wounded.”
The violence is an additional headache for President Goodluck Jonathan. Security forces are already being accused of failing to prevent near-daily attacks by an Islamist sect in the northeast, which claimed Friday’s deadly bomb attack on U.N. offices in Abuja that killed 23.
Nigeria has a roughly equal Christian-Muslim population and more than 200 ethnic groups live side by side in the West African country largely peacefully. But religious violence flares up from time to time especially in Jos.
