Scores hacked to death in Nigerian sectarian clash

[jimmy olsen]

What's with the machetes? Why don't they just shoot them?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/07/scores-hacked-death-nigerian-sectarian

Scores hacked to death in Nigerian sectarian clash

Troops deployed in city of Jos after night 'reprisal' raid as religious tensions add to pre-poll political anxiety

    * David Smith and agencies
    * guardian.co.uk, Sunday 7 March 2010 22.22 GMT
    * Article history

Scores of women and children were today hacked to death by raiders wielding machetes in a fresh bout of religious violence in Nigeria. Dozens of corpses were reportedly piled up in streets near the central city of Jos after pre-dawn clashes between Islamist pastoralists and Christian villagers. One report put the death toll at more than 200.

Some apparently burned to death and many others were displaced as homes were razed to the ground. Local aid agencies described it as a "reprisal" attack for sectarian violence in January that left more than 300 dead, most of them Muslims, and saw Jos put under a military curfew.

Residents in Dogo Nahawa, a mostly Christian village about three miles south of Jos, said Islamist pastoralists from the surrounding hills attacked at about 3am, shooting into the air before slashing villagers with machetes as they came out of their homes.

A villager, Peter Jang, said: "They came around three o'clock in the morning and started shooting into the air. The shooting was meant to bring people from their houses and then, when people came out, they started cutting them with machetes."

Yemi Kosoko, a reporter with the independent Nigerian news network Channels, said he counted more than 200 bodies, mainly women and children, killed by blows from machetes.

Kosoko said he made the count yesterday afternoon with an official from the state government. Military units began surrounding the affected villages around the same time.

"This is an act of inhumanity," said Da Buba Gyang, the traditional ruler of the Christian Berom ethnic group in Jos.

A Reuters witness who visited the village counted around 100 bodies. Pam Dantong, medical director of Plateau state hospital in Jos, showed reporters 18 corpses that had been brought from the village, some of them charred. Officials said other bodies had been taken to a second hospital in the state capital.

Robin Waubo, a spokesman for the Red Cross in Nigeria, said he was aware of 50 confirmed fatalities, but Red Cross staff were still visiting hospitals. "It seems like they were reprisal attacks from what happened a few weeks ago," he said. "The fighting now seems to have calmed down and the military has been deployed to resolve the situation."

He added: "We know people have been slashed by machetes and others have sustained injuries as they tried to flee."

A Red Cross official in the nearby state of Bauchi said more than 600 people had fled into makeshift camps there to escape the violence.

Sectarian violence in this region of Nigeria has left thousands dead during the past decade. Jos lies at the crossroads of Nigeria's Muslim north and predominantly Christian south. In November 2008, clashes between Muslim and Christian gangs triggered by a disputed local election killed at least 700 people.

The instability underscores the fragility of Africa's most populous nation as it approaches the campaign period for elections in 2011 with uncertainty over who is in charge. The acting president, Goodluck Jonathan, is trying to assert his authority while the country's leader, Umaru Yar'Adua, remains too sick to govern.

Yar'Adua returned from three months in a Saudi hospital, where he was being treated for a heart condition, a week and a half ago, but has still not been seen in public. Presidency sources say he remains in a mobile intensive care unit.

Jonathan deployed hundreds of troops and police to quell January's unrest, after an argument between Muslim and Christian neighbours over the rebuilding of homes destroyed in 2008. Community leaders estimated the death toll from the four days of clashes at more than 400, while police figures put it at 326.

[CountDeMoney]

What's with the machetes? Why don't they just shoot them?

If I had my choice, I'd machete you too.   Chop off that wooden leg of yours and then beat you with it.

[Jaron]

If there is hacking involved, mayhaps the Chinese need to be investigated?

[Octavian]

What's with the machetes? Why don't they just shoot them?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/07/scores-hacked-death-nigerian-sectarian

Scores hacked to death in Nigerian sectarian clash

Troops deployed in city of Jos after night 'reprisal' raid as religious tensions add to pre-poll political anxiety

    * David Smith and agencies
    * guardian.co.uk, Sunday 7 March 2010 22.22 GMT
    * Article history

Scores of women and children were today hacked to death by raiders wielding machetes in a fresh bout of religious violence in Nigeria. Dozens of corpses were reportedly piled up in streets near the central city of Jos after pre-dawn clashes between Islamist pastoralists and Christian villagers. One report put the death toll at more than 200.

Some apparently burned to death and many others were displaced as homes were razed to the ground. Local aid agencies described it as a "reprisal" attack for sectarian violence in January that left more than 300 dead, most of them Muslims, and saw Jos put under a military curfew.

Residents in Dogo Nahawa, a mostly Christian village about three miles south of Jos, said Islamist pastoralists from the surrounding hills attacked at about 3am, shooting into the air before slashing villagers with machetes as they came out of their homes.

A villager, Peter Jang, said: "They came around three o'clock in the morning and started shooting into the air. The shooting was meant to bring people from their houses and then, when people came out, they started cutting them with machetes."

Yemi Kosoko, a reporter with the independent Nigerian news network Channels, said he counted more than 200 bodies, mainly women and children, killed by blows from machetes.

Kosoko said he made the count yesterday afternoon with an official from the state government. Military units began surrounding the affected villages around the same time.

"This is an act of inhumanity," said Da Buba Gyang, the traditional ruler of the Christian Berom ethnic group in Jos.

A Reuters witness who visited the village counted around 100 bodies. Pam Dantong, medical director of Plateau state hospital in Jos, showed reporters 18 corpses that had been brought from the village, some of them charred. Officials said other bodies had been taken to a second hospital in the state capital.

Robin Waubo, a spokesman for the Red Cross in Nigeria, said he was aware of 50 confirmed fatalities, but Red Cross staff were still visiting hospitals. "It seems like they were reprisal attacks from what happened a few weeks ago," he said. "The fighting now seems to have calmed down and the military has been deployed to resolve the situation."

He added: "We know people have been slashed by machetes and others have sustained injuries as they tried to flee."

A Red Cross official in the nearby state of Bauchi said more than 600 people had fled into makeshift camps there to escape the violence.

Sectarian violence in this region of Nigeria has left thousands dead during the past decade. Jos lies at the crossroads of Nigeria's Muslim north and predominantly Christian south. In November 2008, clashes between Muslim and Christian gangs triggered by a disputed local election killed at least 700 people.

The instability underscores the fragility of Africa's most populous nation as it approaches the campaign period for elections in 2011 with uncertainty over who is in charge. The acting president, Goodluck Jonathan, is trying to assert his authority while the country's leader, Umaru Yar'Adua, remains too sick to govern.

Yar'Adua returned from three months in a Saudi hospital, where he was being treated for a heart condition, a week and a half ago, but has still not been seen in public. Presidency sources say he remains in a mobile intensive care unit.

Jonathan deployed hundreds of troops and police to quell January's unrest, after an argument between Muslim and Christian neighbours over the rebuilding of homes destroyed in 2008. Community leaders estimated the death toll from the four days of clashes at more than 400, while police figures put it at 326.

Barbarians!

I haven't really read the article exept for the first few lines but I assume the muslims are responsible for for worst acts of violence.

[Syt]

Let's cut to the chase: what can be done to dismember those groups? Should the head be removed, so the torso remains leaderless? Or is it better to cut off the operation's hands to leave the head powerless? This problem should be gutted once and for all.

Either way it'll keep the people on edge for some time to come. At least the media get their slice in the form of coverage.

[Martinus]

Africa can just go fuck itself, as far as I am concerned. If they get their shit together, and manage to form an arguably working country rather than a chaotic patchwork of murderous tribes slaughtering each other, they turn on white farmers or gays instead.

It's a shithole beyond redemption. We should just fence it off and leave it to rot.

[Lettow77]

The acting president, Goodluck Jonathan

man, that's some good stuff.

Edit: something something Biafran independence

[Martinus]

A villager, Peter Jang, said: "They came around three o'clock in the morning and started shooting into the air. The shooting was meant to bring people from their houses and then, when people came out, they started cutting them with machetes."

Maybe Africa is fucked up because people have wrong responses there? Perhaps we should teach them some basic DOs and DONTs. Things like: "When you hear shooting in the street, don't go out to check what it is." or "When flies are crawling all over your face, swat them away."

[Martinus]

The acting president, Goodluck Jonathan

man, that's some good stuff.

Edit: something something Biafran independence

Da Buba Gyang is also a good one.

[Lettow77]

 Hey martinus, would you support secession of the South if we supported gay marriage?

Because, you know, Tennessee Williams.

[CountDeMoney]

Hey martinus, would you support secession of the South if we supported gay marriage?

Because, you know, Tennessee Williams.

[Warspite]

Africa can just go fuck itself, as far as I am concerned. If they get their shit together, and manage to form an arguably working country rather than a chaotic patchwork of murderous tribes slaughtering each other, they turn on white farmers or gays instead.

It's a shithole beyond redemption. We should just fence it off and leave it to rot.

Yes, if only Africa had a Ghana, Botswana, Mozambique, or Namibia

[Ed Anger]

 Polacks are so funny.

[Faeelin]

Africa can just go fuck itself, as far as I am concerned. If they get their shit together, and manage to form an arguably working country rather than a chaotic patchwork of murderous tribes slaughtering each other, they turn on white farmers or gays instead.

It's a shithole beyond redemption. We should just fence it off and leave it to rot.

It's funny how you act all liberal until a people opress their gays. Then you want the poorest place on the planet to suck and die.

[Martinus]

Africa can just go fuck itself, as far as I am concerned. If they get their shit together, and manage to form an arguably working country rather than a chaotic patchwork of murderous tribes slaughtering each other, they turn on white farmers or gays instead.

It's a shithole beyond redemption. We should just fence it off and leave it to rot.

It's funny how you act all liberal until a people opress their gays. Then you want the poorest place on the planet to suck and die.

It's funny how your retarded, self-hating ass is unable to even read with comprehension. This is not a thread about gays - it's about slaughtering Christians. So my reaction can be hardly said to be caused by "people oppressing their gays".