JOS, Nigeria (AP) -- Rioters armed with machetes slaughtered more than 200 people overnight Sunday as religious violence flared anew between Christians and Muslims in central Nigeria, witnesses said. Hundreds of people fled their homes, fearing reprisal attacks.
The bodies of the dead -- including many women and children -- lined dusty streets in three mostly Christian villages south of the regional capital of Jos, local journalists and a civil rights group said. They said at least 200 bodies had been counted by Sunday afternoon.
Torched homes smoldered after the 3 a.m. attacks that a region-wide curfew enforced by the country's police and military should have stopped.
The killings represent the latest religious violence in an area once known as Nigeria's top tourist destination, adding to the tally of thousands already killed in the last decade in the name of religious and political ambitions.
Jos lies in Nigeria's ''middle belt,'' where dozens of ethnic groups mingle in a band of fertile and hotly contested land separating the Muslim north from the predominantly Christian south.
In Dogo Nahawa, a village three miles (five kilometers) south of Jos, residents said the dead included a 4-day-old infant. Those who survived claimed their attackers shouted at them in Hausa and Fulani -- two local languages used by Muslims.
(Photo from Vanguard)
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