More than 200 people have been reported dead in central Nigeria after Christians and Muslims clashed over a disputed local government chairmanship election, the Red Cross said Saturday.
The rioting was sparked off in Jos, the capital of Plateau State, after rumors spread that the candidate from the All Nigerian Peoples Party belonging to the Hausa ethnic group had lost to the Christian-dominated federal governing People's Democratic Party.
Rampaging mobs burned homes, churches and mosques in a second day of riots in the worst sectarian violence in Africa's most populous nation in years. More than seven thousand people fled their homes and were sheltering in government buildings and religious centers.
Jos has a long history of community violence that has made it difficult to organize voting. Rioting in September 2001 killed more than one thousand people. The authorities imposed an around-the-clock curfew on neighborhoods of the city and ordered the army to shoot on sight to stop more clashes.
The tensions in Plateau have their roots in decades of animosity by indigenous minority groups, mostly Christian or animist, toward Muslim migrants and settlers from the Hausa-speaking north.
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