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Scores more bodies recovered after Nigerian clashes

23 January 2010 00:19 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Ayaz Abdulla â€“ APA. Volunteers recovered scores more bodies in Nigeria’s troubled central Plateau state Friday as the death toll from inter-religious clashes rose and the army was ordered to step up security, APA reports quoting AFP news agency.
Christian and Muslim leaders said the four days of fighting, which left hundreds dead, had reopened "festering wounds and unresolved grievances" and posed a challenge to the country’s dominant faiths.
"This tragic event certainly challenges us all to address the deep hurts, festering wounds and unresolved grievances ...from earlier episodes," said Catholic Archbishop John Onaiyekan and Abubakar Saad, the Sultan of Sokoto, in a joint statement.
"Our problems are self inflicted and are well within our control," they said.
Christian and Muslim leaders in Plateau State said previously the unrest owed more to the failure of political leaders to address ethnic differences than to inter-faith rivalries.
The bodies recovered Friday were picked up from streets, houses and water wells in Kuru Karama, a village some 30 kilometres (19 miles) south of state capital Jos, the epicentre of the clashes.
Many of the victims had been thrown into wells in the outlying village, the leader of a Muslim aid team said. Related article: Religious clashes bring horror to Nigerian village
"So far we have retrieved 62 bodies but many more are still in the wells and I?m afraid we may have to sand-fill them because the bodies have decomposed so bad that the flesh disintegrates when we try to bring them out," Ibrahim Tanimu told AFP as his team piled the bodies into waiting vans.
Life was slowly returning to normal in Jos on Friday with an increase in human and vehicle traffic on the streets, but banks remained shut.
"Many more people are venturing out from where they are hiding," said Namadi Bello, waiting in a petrol queue.
As thousands of troops patrolled the streets of Jos and surrounding towns to ensure there is no resumption of hostilities, some locals, like medical student Jude Chedeber, were trying to leave the city.
"I am leaving for Enugu because of the crisis," she said.
Some 18,000 people have already taken refuge in military barracks, churches and mosques around the city after fleeing the fighting, the Red Cross said.
Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan pledged that the ringleaders responsible for the violence would be brought to justice, and ordered the army to take over security of the affected regions and sensitive neighbouring areas.
"The federal government is determined to secure convictions of the perpetrators of this crime, no matter how highly placed," he said.
That order came as survivors in the predominantly Muslim enclave of Kuru Karama blamed the massacres on their Christian neighbours and the police.
The state government has given no official death toll from the violence, which broke out on Sunday, but religious leaders and medical workers said they had counted around 300 bodies by Wednesday.
Thousands of troops had deployed in the city and a curfew relaxed to allow people to replenish depleted food and water supplies, collect bodies and bury the dead.
Ninety-eight victims were buried in a mass grave in Jos on Thursday.
Many people killed in the violence were hacked to death with machetes, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
A local rights body the Civil Rights Congress (CRC) said most of the weapons used in the killings were primitive such as bows and arrows, machetes and axes.
"We have observed that primitive weapons kept in houses after the last violence in 2008, were used," said CRC’s Shehu Sani.
Jos has been a hotbed of religious violence in Nigeria, whose 150 million people are divided almost equally between followers of the two faiths. An estimated 200 people were killed in religious clashes in the city in 2008.