Further scenes of rioting in Nigeria

Press, 1 November 1982, Page 1

Further scenes of rioting in Nigeria

NZPA Lagos Rioting has broken out in a third city in northern Nigeria where hundreds of people were killed last week in the worst, outbreak of religious violence since 1980, according to the News Agency of Nigeria.

It reported that Muslim students had on Friday set fire to churches in Kano, where several . hundred people were killed when Muslim fanatics went on the rampage in 1980. The agency, which did not link the incident with rioting

in Maiduguri and Kaduna last week, said no death had been reported.

Government officials said that police reinforcements from four northern states had restored order in Maiduguri on Friday after more than three days of-rioting by Muslim fanatics. Hospital sources put the death toll at 350. The police commissioner in Kaduna, quoted by N.A.N., said that 16 civilians and two policemen were killed in clashes on . Friday after the police had tried to investigate reports that about 200 Muslim fanatics had arrived from Maiduguri. Nigerian television, quoting the commissioner, later reported that Kaduna was under control. The trouble in Maiduguri began when the police tried to arrest 16 followers’ of Alhaji Mohammadu Marwa, who was killed in the 1980 Kano riots alleged to have been caused by his preaching. A statement by the Government in Lagos on Wednesday said that the 16 had been preaching without a licence. The Government has confirmed that 15 policemen were killed in Maiduguri, which is about 640 km from Kaduna. Civilian casualties were still being counted, it said. But N.A.N. said that 100 policemen of the 110 first sent to quell the riots were still missing. Officials in Lagos said that more than 300 extremists had been arrested in Maiduguri. N.A.N. attributed the disturbances in Kano on Friday to a disagreement over the siting of a church near a mosque.