Nigeria riot victims swamp hospitals

Bodies awaiting burial were piled up at wards in Jos, witnesses said, as troops enforced a curfew amid an uneasy calm.

The state authorities claim that foreigners from neighbouring Chad and Niger were involved in the clashes, which claimed at least 200 lives.

Violence flared on Friday amid claims an election had been rigged.

The BBC's Alex Last in Lagos says the fighting appears to be over and Jos is now counting the cost of the latest confrontation between Christians and Muslims in recent years.

Hundreds of people are seeking sanctuary in police stations and the local army barracks.

“As a government, as leaders that you have chosen, we will do our own to make sure that the people who did this are properly dealt with,” Bankole said. “You must allow us to do it, cause that is the job you’ve given us.”

The youth then left the mosque peacefully, and it was cordoned off by security forces.

More than 3000 police and military reinforcements flooded into the city Monday, enforcing a night time curfew across the city, and a 24 hour curfew in some of the harder-hit neighbourhoods, military officials said.

The Plateau state government announced that 200 people have died in the clashes that erupted following local state elections on Friday, but other sources have given higher numbers.

The Red Cross told the French Press Agency AFP that “well over 300 people were killed, while Khaled Abubakar, an imam at the central mosque, as well as other Muslim officials spoke of 400 bodies at the mosque, the AFP reported.

Rival ethnic and religious mobs have burned homes, shops, mosques, and churches in the violence sparked off by the dispute over council elections.

Plateau State Commissioner for Information, Nuhu Gagara, disclosed that the government is struggling to cater for over 10,620 displaced persons scattered in different camps in the city.

There are 7,650 displaced Christians while 2,970 Muslims are in refugee camps. Over 3,000 students of the University of Jos (UNIJOS) held up on their campus have now moved out to where they could board vehicles home.