YELWA, Nigeria (Reuters) - Hafsat Garba wept as she recounted
how heavily armed Christian militiamen, stripped to the
waist and wearing charms on their arms, invaded her home
town. The 36-year-old
mother of two was one of hundreds of Muslim women abducted
by the warriors during a two-day assault on the central
Nigerian town of Yelwa in which hundreds were killed.
"At the town center,
they separated women and children from the men,"
Hafsat said, trembling uncontrollably as she sat at a
military checkpoint near the town. "They killed our
men and took the women and children away."
The attack on Yelwa 225 miles east of the capital Abuja,
was the latest fighting between Christian tribes and the
Muslim Hausa-Fulani people which first broke out in 2001
when about 1,000 people were killed in the Plateau state
capital of Jos.
At least another 1,000 have been killed in the last three
months in small towns and villages across the southern
part of Plateau state.
The conflict is rooted in competing claims over land,
property and political rights, as well as religion.
The Tarok and other predominantly Christian indigenous
tribes say the semi-nomadic Fulani are foreign to the
area and that their large herds of cattle destroy crops.
The Fulani say they have been grazing their livestock
there for centuries.
SWOLLEN FEET
Pointing to her swollen
feet, Hasfat said she had trekked for several miles back
toward her home after being held for three days in captivity.
She did not know if her
husband had survived and was afraid of returning to Yelwa
in case there was more fighting.
Charred corpses still lay in the streets days after the
attack as riot police battled with looters.
At what used to be Yelwa's main market district, young
men gathered round a grilled meat vendor near a military
checkpoint, the only sign of commerce in the once flourishing
little market town.
Muslims in Yelwa had been
dreading a reprisal attack since February when a crowd
of Islamic militants killed more than 100 Christians in
the town, including 48 massacred in a church which was
set on fire. Many
in Yelwa believe the last straw was when two Christians
were killed by Muslims in the nearby village of Kawo.
"No Muslim could
go to Kawo. If you stopped your vehicle there, they smashed
your windshield. Even when you were driving past the village
you could hear them threatening that they would overrun
Yelwa someday," said Ozero Yunusa, whose left leg
was fractured by a bullet during the fighting.
Witnesses said troops, sent to Yelwa after the February
violence, took flight as soon as the Christian militia
attacked it.
"The soldiers said
they were going to get reinforcements, but they never
came back. The mobile (riot) policemen also ran away,"
Yunusa told . Hashim
Mohammed said they tried to repel the attack, but their
stones, bows and arrows were no match for their assailants
who were armed with automatic rifles, including machine
guns.
"The attackers retreated around 7.30
p.m. on Sunday, but promised to return," said Mohammed,
who was shot in the leg. "The attack was more intensive
on Monday when we were overwhelmed and boxed in at the
town square where they just slaughtered us like sheep."
A policeman said many Muslims
who survived the massacre had hidden in the basement of
the town's main mosque, which was razed. Abdullahi
Abdullahi, a Yelwa community leader said 630 bodies had
been buried in mass graves after the massacre, a figure
that could not be independently verified. A
senior policeman spoke of hundreds killed. Religious
violence has killed at least 5,000 in Nigeria in the last
four years
