<<http://allafrica.com/stories/200405070681.html>>
More than 600 people were killed when militiamen from a mainly Christian ethnic group attacked Muslims in a small town in central Nigeria last weekend, a Red Cross official said on Friday. A heavily armed group of militiamen from the mainly Christian Tarok ethnic group raided the small town of Yelwa in Plateau state on Sunday in reprisal for an earlier Muslim attack on their own community. Their victims were mainly members of the Hausa and Fulani tribes. On Thursday, Umar Mairiga led the first team of Red Cross officials into Yelwa, 220 km east of the capital Abuja, to assess the situation. He told reporters afterwards that he was shown a mass grave where more than 250 people were said to have been buried. Mairiga said he had heard accounts from survivors indicating that several hundred people had been killed. "From what we have seen and heard we think it is correct that more than 600 people were killed," he said. Police said earlier this week they had found 67 bodies in Yelwa. According to Mairiga, an unknown number of people, mostly women and children, were abducted in the attack by young Tarok men armed with guns and machetes. Red Cross officials treated 158 people for injuries, he added. ----- "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded project." - James Madison
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