Violence Against Muslims by Christians Flaring Up in Nigeria...

From today's New York Times article Nigeria Counts 100 Deaths Over Danish Caricatures

"Dozens of charred, smoldering bodies littered the streets of this bustling commercial center on Thursday after three days of rioting in which Christian mobs wielding machetes, clubs and knives set upon their Muslim neighbors.

Rioters have killed scores of people here, mostly Muslims, after burning their homes, businesses and mosques in the worst violence yet linked to the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad first published in a Danish newspaper. The violence in Nigeria began with attacks on Christians in the northern part of the country last week by Muslims infuriated over the cartoons.

Now old ethnic and political tensions between Muslims in the north and Christians here in the south have been reignited, with at least 33 bodies still visible on the streets of Onitsha on Thursday and a local organization that has tried to collect the scattered corpses reporting that it has already picked up 80 others.

The cycle of tit-for-tat sectarian violence has pushed the death toll in the last week well beyond 100, making Nigeria the hardest-hit country so far in the caricature controversy.

The main thoroughfare leading into the city across the Niger River was covered in bodies of Muslim Hausas who had tried to flee rampaging bands of youths, witnesses said. Many of the victims appeared to have been beaten to death; most of the bodies had been doused with gasoline and burned.

Residents combed through the destroyed shops and homes of Muslims, looting whatever the flames had not carried away.

"These things belong to Igbos," said Sunday Tagbo, 25, referring to the dominant ethnic group of this region, more commonly known worldwide as Ibos, as he helped himself to sooty car parts left behind by fleeing merchants. "This is Igbo land. No more Muslims can live here."

City and state officials urged calm, and a semblance of the ordinary returned to the city's streets on Thursday, with markets open and heavy traffic on the streets. But the damage of three days of carnage was evident. At the central mosque, rioters burned the building and hacked down trees surrounding it.

Someone wrote in chalk on a charred wall, "Jesus is Lord." The message went on to warn that "from today" there would be no more Muhammad. Thousands of Muslim residents fled the city, some on foot over the bridge leading to Delta State, taking refuge in neighboring cities. Thousands more huddled in police and army barracks in Onitsha and surrounding towns.

"What has become of us?" lamented the Rev. Joseph Ezeugo, pastor of Immaculate Heart Parish. "This cannot be Nigeria today. We have been living side by side with our Muslim brothers for so long. Why should a cartoon in Denmark bring us to civil war?""

Let us pray that civil war does not result in Nigeria, or anywhere else for that matter.