http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1504&ncid=1504&e=5&u=/afp/20040520/ts_afp/nigeria_unrest_040520183003Nigeria Crisis: Christian youths arm themselves as hundreds flee
SABON GIDA, Nigeria (AFP) - Hundreds of Christians were fleeing this remote Nigerian village following an attack by Muslim militiamen, leaving behind a ragtag gang of lightly-armed youths to protect their homes.
Villagers from Sabon Gida, an impoverished cluster of mud-brick huts in central Nigeria's strife-torn Plateau State, told AFP that they and six more communities nearby were attacked by Fulani gunmen before dawn on Tuesday.
"Seven villages have been attacked, they killed 25 people. I saw 25 dead bodies myself," said Pastor Mangmwos Tangshak, head of the local branch of the Christian Association of Nigeria. The dead were buried by relatives, he added. <snip>
The attack on Sabon Gida and neighbouring villages is the latest atrocity in a three-year-old battle between religious and ethnic groups for control of Plateau State's fertile farmlands, a fight which has claimed hundreds of lives. <snip>
Plateau State's police chief, Commissioner Innocent Iluozoke, told AFP that the latest attack on Sabon Gida was carried out by Muslim members of the Hausa and Fulani ethnic groups who came over the border from Nassarawa State. <snip>