Many dozens of people were killed and thousands forced to flee their homes during ethnic and religious clashes in the northern Nigerian town of Tafawa Balewa last month, witnesses said yesterday.
"There are many dozens who have been killed - at least 50 but probably many more. It has been terrible," a trader in the town said. Tafawa Balewa is situated about 400 km north-east of the Nigerian capital, Abuja.
People were also killed in four villages in the Bogoro local government area, reliable medical sources said, pushing the estimated death toll into the hundreds.
Two of the villages - Gagare and Jigawa - are mainly ethnic Hausa Muslim villages. They were attacked by Christian youths from the Sayawa ethnic community, the sources said. Fighting also took place in two other villages - Gittal and Gobbya - which are mainly Sayawa Christian, they added.
The Bauchi state government is keen to play down the crisis for fear of sparking retaliation elsewhere. A government spokesman, Mr Mohammed Abdullahi, said the death toll was not known.
The spark for the violence came in the second half of last month following an incident on June 19th in a bus park in Tafawa Balewa.
Muslims form the majority population in Tafawa Balewa, the home town of a former prime minister, and come mainly from the Hausa and Jarawa ethnic groups.
The minority Christians, who belong mainly to the Sayawa ethnic group, have been angered by the introduction last month of the Sharia Islamic law code favoured by Muslims.
On June 19th, a Muslim bus driver insisted that his male and female passengers be segregated into different areas of the bus. This sparked a riot by the Christians who said it meant Islamic law was being imposed on them.
In the days that followed dozens of mosques were burned, several churches attacked and dozens of homes razed to the ground. Hundreds of police have been deployed from five neighbouring states and yesterday they began manning checkpoints and at the town gates and elsewhere.
The Nigerian Red Cross on Monday said 22,000 people had fled their homes in Tafawa Balewa and surrounding villages following the fighting, but it declined to provide a number for casualties.
The acting secretary general of the Nigerian Red Cross, Mr Abiodun Orebiyi, said many people had been killed, but he too declined to give a more precise figure. The Bauchi State government says Sharia has not been imposed on non-Muslims, but admits it has been applied in the town.
"The state government has not attempted to impose Sharia on non-Muslims. We have stated many times that Sharia is only meant for Muslims and we stand by that," Mr Abdullahi said.
He said Sharia was not being applied at all in the Bogoro local government where Christians are a majority.
"As for Tafawa Balewa, it is a fact that Muslims are in the majority which means that Sharia can be implemented there," he added.