Forty-Eight Dead in Outbreak of Religious Violence

February 26, 2004

Source: News 24

http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,,2-11-1447_1489639,00.html

On February 26, 2004 News 24 reported, " Suspected Muslim militants armed with guns and bows and arrows killed at least 48 people in an attack on a farming village in central Nigeria. Most of the victims died as they sought refuge in a church, police said. The latest bout of Muslim-Christian violence in the region occurred on Tuesday night in Yelwa, a mainly Christian town in Nigeria's Plateau State, police commissioner Innocent Ilozuoke said. Army and police reinforcements helped restore calm, Ilozuoke told a news conference on Wednesday in Jos, the state capital. The killings appeared to be the latest retaliatory attack in a sporadic conflict that has rocked the central region since an outburst of sectarian violence in 2001, pitting Christians against Muslims in once-peaceful Jos. In the initial outburst in Jos more than a thousand people died in one week."