Four die in communal violence in Nigeria

Four people were killed by gunmen in southeast Nigeria, police said on Saturday, after a week of clashes with security forces as inter-community tensions rise in the former Biafra region.

The attack appeared to target a market and a mosque in a neighbourhood of the city of Asaba inhabited mainly by the Hausa and Peul ethnic groups, who are originally from northern Nigeria.

“Three armed men, all in black outfits, suspected to be members of a cult group or Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) fired indiscriminately into Abraka market at Asaba ... and in the process killed four persons,” a local police statement said. Five others were wounded.

The IPOB is demanding an independent state for the Igbo people, the most populous ethnic group in Nigeria’s southeast.

Hassan Farouk, who sells yams in the market, said, “It happened about 11pm on Friday. Over 20 armed members of IPOB invaded our mosque at Cable Point and threw an explosive into the mosque but fortunately, it did not explode.”

He said they raised the alarm “and the attackers all moved straight to the Hausa market.”

The southeast has seen a resurgence of violence over the past week, a situation Amnesty International has called “deeply worrying”.

Nigeria, which is almost evenly split between a predominantly Muslim north and largely Christian south, is a country of barely concealed religious and ethnic tensions.

Violence frequently erupts but Biafra is a sensitive issue as a previous unilateral declaration of independence by the region in 1967 sparked a brutal, 30-month civil war.