Morgue overflowing from riots
13/05/2004 12:31 - (SA)
Kano, Nigeria - Religious rioting appeared to have abated on Thursday in the northern Nigerian city of Kano after police used hardline tactics to quell the violence between Muslims and the Christian minority.
But tensions remained high, especially at the Kano General Hospital where distraught relatives were prevented from searching for their loved ones in the morgue, which was so full that at least five bodies were stacked outside.
"We can't allow anybody into the morgue or near it because what we need now is to keep the peace in Kano. Imagine what would happen if dead bodies were released to relatives," a doctor told reporters on condition of anonymity.
"We will wait until everything is calm until we give the bodies out or allow anybody to go in to check for his relations," he said.
Many of the angry residents alleged that the true reason the bodies were being concealed was to hide evidence that many of the dead had been shot by police, not killed by sectarian mobs.
Shoot-on-sight orders
On Wednesday, Kano's police chief, Commissioner Abdul Ganiyu Dawodu, said he had issued shoot-on-sight orders to his overwhelmed officers after two days of bloodletting triggered by Muslim anger over an earlier Christian-led attack.
On May 2, a militia from a Christian ethnic group attacked the mainly Muslim market town of Yelwa, in central Nigeria, killing more than 200 civilians.
On Tuesday a street demonstration by Kano's Muslims against the murder of their brethren degenerated into mob violence. Christian homes and businesses in the city were looted and burned, and many residents killed.
The official police casualty toll was given late Tuesday as 30, but accounts from Christians among the more than five thousand people who fled Kano's outlying suburbs suggested the final tally could be much higher.
The fighting has sparked fears that Muslim-Christian violence might erupt across Nigeria, the west African giant whose 130-million-strong population is split roughly evenly between the two faiths.
In 2000 and 2001 a string of sectarian clashes in Nigerian cities left many thousands of dead on both sides of the divide.
A strict curfew was in place overnight in Kano, but that did not stop the local offices of the Central Bank of Nigeria being burned to the ground. It was not clear who or what had started the fire, a firefighter at the scene told journalists.
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