Nigeria's Muslims 'tired of the massacres'

Angry young Muslim men attacked "nonbelievers" with machetes Tuesday, while others burned cars, stores and apartments in apparent revenge for last week's killings of hundreds of Muslims by a Christian group.

Three corpses -- one charred and another badly mutilated -- lay in the streets; it was unclear who killed them. There were unconfirmed reports of several others killed by young men who barricaded streets with burning tires and garbage.

The violence came hours after thousands of Muslim protesters -- some carrying daggers, sickles and clubs -- marched from the main mosque in the northern city of Kano, traditionally a hotbed of religious tensions

Rioting has broken out in the northern city of Kano at a rally to protest at the recent killing of hundreds of Muslims in central Nigeria. Reporters and eyewitnesses have seen at least 10 bodies at the scene.

Some 10,000 Muslims marched to the state governor's office from a mosque to hand over a letter of protest.

More than 10,000 people have died in ethnic, religious and sectarian violence in Nigeria since the end of military rule five years ago.

Reporters said several Christian-run businesses were looted and burned in Kano, with heavily armed officers in police vehicles sporadically firing warning shots.

Kano - Muslim mobs looted and burned at least five Christian-run businesses in the northern Nigerian city of Kano on Tuesday, after a rally called to protest a sectarian massacre.

A reporter at the scene said that gangs of young men torched and looted Christian properties on Gyadi-Gyadi Court Road in a mainly Muslim area of the city, triggering explosions in a cooking gas store.

Police jeeps were racing around the area, with heavily armed officers sporadically firing warning shots, but security forces appeared to be holding back to avoid triggering a full-scale confrontation with the mob.

Thousands of angy Muslims took to the streets in Kano, the largest city in northern Nigeria, on Tuesday, to protest at the killing of more than 600 fellow Muslims in a brutal attack by Christian gunmen in the town of Yelwa earlier this month.

Schools and businesses closed in panic as protesters burned cars and Christian-owned businesses. Islamic clerics who led the march said there was a Western conspiracy to kill Muslims.

"Muslims are tired of the killing of their brothers in this country, especially with what is going on in Yelwa," Umar Ibrahim Kabo, head of Kano's Council of Ulammah (Clerics) told the protesters.

Based on the accounts of survivors, the Nigerian Red Cross has estimated that more than 600 Muslims were killed in the 2 May attack attack on Yelwa, a small mainly Muslim town in Plateau State in central Nigeria. Most of them were from the Hausa and Fulani ethnic groups which dominate northern Nigeria.

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