Posted on 05/11/2004 11:41:27 AM PDT by ambrose
Mobs raze Christian-run businesses in Nigeria
May 11 2004 at 05:03PM
Kano - Muslim mobs looted and burned at least five Christian-run businesses in the northern Nigerian city of Kano on Tuesday, after a rally called to protest a sectarian massacre.
A reporter at the scene said that gangs of young men torched and looted Christian properties on Gyadi-Gyadi Court Road in a mainly Muslim area of the city, triggering explosions in a cooking gas store.
Police jeeps were racing around the area, with heavily armed officers sporadically firing warning shots, but security forces appeared to be holding back to avoid triggering a full-scale confrontation with the mob.
Most businesses, including the main Christian market in the minority community's ghetto, Sabon Gari, had been closed before Tuesday's mass rally called in protest at last week's attack on the Muslim town of Yelwa.
There was no sign of any casualties in the violence.
On Sunday last week a heavily armed gang of militants from the Christian Tarok ethnic group stormed the mainly-Muslim rural town of Yelwa, in the Shendam local government area of central Nigeria's Plateau state, and killed between 200 and 300 people, according to government figures.
At Tuesday's protest, Islamic leaders demanded that President Olusegun Obasanjo put an end to the Plateau state crisis within seven days "or bear the blame of whatever happens".
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