Clashes between rival ethnic and religious groups in the central Nigerian city of Jos killed at least 20 people today, injured hundreds more and forces thousands from their homes, the Red Cross said.
Authorities imposed a night-time curfew on the capital of the central Plateau state and soldiers deployed on the streets after rival gangs burned churches, mosques and homes in a dispute triggered by a local election.
The unrest is the most serious of its kind in Africa's most populous nation, roughly equally split between Christians and Muslims, since president Umaru Yar'Adua took power in May 2007.
Over 300 people were injured and 100 houses were burnt down, a senior Red Cross official said.
Youths with machetes hacked to death a policeman and burned tyres in one part of the city, sending plumes of thick black smoke into the air, witnesses said.
The violence was triggered by a disputed vote for a new local government chairman in Jos North, the commercial centre of Plateau state.
Residents said demonstrators from the Hausa ethnic group began protesting in the early hours today after a rumour spread that their ANPP party candidate had lost the race to the ruling PDP party.
Christians and Muslims generally live peacefully side by side in Africa's top oil producer, a country of 140 million people. But hostility has simmered in the past in Plateau state.
Hundreds were killed in ethnic-religious street fighting in Jos in 2001. Three years later, hundreds more died in clashes in the town of Yelwa, leading then-president Olusegun Obasanjo to declare a state of emergency and impose a curfew.
Reuters