ABUJA, 20 Feb 2006 (IRIN) - At least 17 people, including a Catholic priest, were killed and 30 churches burned in the northeast Nigerian city of Maiduguri when Muslims protesting cartoons caricaturing the Prophet Muhammad turned on local Christians, police said.
Nigerian police spokesman Haz Iwendi said a crowd of protesters in the predominantly Muslim city targeted the Christian minority, burning and looting their shops and churches on Saturday.
"We can confirm that 17 persons were killed, 30 churches and five hotels were also burnt," Iwendi told IRIN.
Police eventually dispersed the demonstrators and reinforcements of policemen and soldiers have been sent in to patrol the city, the capital of Borno State in northeastern Nigeria, which is now calm, the police spokesman said.
Initially published in a Denmark newspaper in September the cartoons -- one depicting the Prophet wearing a turban resembling a bomb -- sparked outrage among Muslims worldwide. Muslims say that the caricatures are blasphemous as Islam bars all images of Muhammad, and that the images associated Islam with terrorism.
Felix Usman, the priest in charge of St Augustine's Catholic Church in Maiduguri, said he was lucky to escape when his church was attacked and burned by protesters. Another colleague, Matthew Gajere, in charge of St Rita’s Catholic Church, was burned to death by rioters inside his church, Usman said.
Usman said when the protesters attacked he called the police on the phone for help but was told they did not have enough officers to respond.
Borno State governor Amodu Sheriff in a broadcast to the state on Sunday declared a dusk-to-dawn curfew and announced the formation of a special panel to investigate the circumstances of the violence.
Initial protests to the cartoons by Nigerian Muslims were relatively peaceful. Two weeks ago lawmakers in Kano, a state also in the north, burned Danish and Norwegian flags in front of the parliament building to express their anger over the cartoons. They also voted to cancel contracts won by Danish companies in the state and called for a boycott of Danish goods.
Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country with more than 126 million people, almost evenly divided between a largely Muslim north and a predominantly Christian south. Thousands of people have died in religious clashes since the end of military rule in 1999 but the underlying motivations are often economic rather than religious.
