Nigerian Muslims urge end to killings, issue ultimatum to govt

By: Mohamed Ali

KANO, Nigeria: Thousands of Muslim demonstrators took to streets of the heavily Muslim northern city of Kano on Tuesday burning US and Israeli flags to protest the killings of hundreds of Muslims by Christian militiamen last week.

Businesses closed and school children hurried home in Kano as the demonstration began from the city's main mosque to protest the attacks on Hausa-speaking Muslims by fighters from the Tarok-speaking tribe in the central Nigerian town of Yelwa. Some demonstrators smashed and burned cars and stores.

Nigerian Muslim leaders linked the Yelwa attacks to the US-led global war against Islam.

“This violence is a calculated global Western war against Muslims, just like in Afghanistan and Iraq,” the chairman of the council of Ulama in the northern city of Kano told protesters. “Muslims are in grief.”

He hinted that Plateau State Governor Joshua Dariye was failing to act. “Dariye is being used by the west to execute a long-planned genocide against Muslims in Nigeria, beginning in Plateau State,” he said.

A Red Cross official has said between 500 and 600 people died in the Yelwa attacks, while the Nigerian government's emergency response agency estimates fewer than half that number.

The Muslim leaders issued a seven-day ultimatum to President Olusegun Obasanjo to bring the Christian militia behind the recent massacre to justice “or be blamed for whatever happens” afterward.

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