SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 2004
10 killed in Christian-Muslim clashes in Nigeria
AP
ABUJA : Christians battled Muslims in a Nigerian city on Wednesday, burning homes and places of worship in a dispute over the construction of a Muslim mosque near a Christian tribal leader's palace, witnesses and police said.
Ten people were killed in the fighting that started on Tuesday in the city of Numan , near Nigeria 's eastern border with Cameroon , witnesses said.
A senior police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he were aware of only four injuries.
Christians of the local Bachama tribe had demanded for weeks that the area's minority Muslim Hausa-speakers destroy a mosque built early this year near the palace of Bachama chief Freddie Soditi Bongo.
The Bachama complained the mosque's minaret was an affront to majority Christians because it was taller than the Christian leader's palace.
Muslim leaders had refused to tear down the mosque until Christians pay for a new one elsewhere.
When the fighting began on Tuesday, youths tore down the mosque's minaret and severely vandalised several other mosques in nearby Gyawana village, several Christian witnesses said.
A Christian cleric said his parishioners reported seeing the bodies of 10 people, mainly Muslims, in the streets.
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