Nigerian Christians Riot, Kill Muslims in Retaliation

Nigerian Christians have gone on an anti-Muslim killing spree, apparently in retaliation for earlier murderous riots by Muslims angered over cartoons.

Christian mobs rampaged through a southern Nigerian city Tuesday, burning mosques and killing several people in an outbreak of anti-Muslim violence that followed deadly protests against caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad over the weekend.

Residents and witnesses in the southern, predominantly Christian city of Onitsha said several Muslims with origins in the north were beaten to death by mobs which also burned two mosques there. “The mosque at the main market has been burnt and I’ve counted at least six dead bodies on the streets,” Izzy Uzor, an Onitsha resident and businessman, told The Associated Press by telephone. “The whole town is in a frenzy and people are running in all directions.”

The violence appeared to be in reprisal for anti-Christian violence Saturday in the mostly Muslim northern city of Maiduguri in which thousands of Muslims protesting caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad attacked Christians and burned churches, killing at least 18 people.

Lovely. Not particularly surprising, I suppose, but nonetheless tragic.

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James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. RA says:

    Christians are not supposed to retaliate. That is easier said than done when it is your family that is being murdered. Government intervention, bringing the Muslim rioters to justice would have prevented this.

    This an anomoly. This rarely happens in todays world.

  2. G A PHILLIPS says:

    Live By the scimitar die by the scimitar, Sill I know all mobs are wrong, in all ways, it says so in my bible, what do you think it says in the Muslims bible about this?