Nigerians caught in the midst of violence

AGASHA, Nigeria -- Moses Mbaissa fled his home after an attack by fighters from a rival tribe. He took refuge in another town only to find more bloodshed. Soldiers were gunning down unarmed villagers. \nA longtime conflict between ethnic Tivs and Jukuns has heated up in recent weeks, with tribal fighters hacking off the limbs of women and children and burning villages. \nLast week, government soldiers sent to quiet the violence entered the fray, burning down at least seven mainly Tiv villages and shooting at least 150 civilians, and probably twice as many. \nAt a camp in Agasha for some 2,500 displaced civilians set up in a school, Mbaissa, a 30-year-old farmer, told on Saturday how he and his family fled a Jukun attack on his home village of Dooshima nearly two weeks ago. \nHe arrived in the village of Zaki-Biam, just one day before soldiers arrived there Monday. \nThe soldiers gathered up Zaki-Biam residents, telling them to "stay quiet while we keep the peace." Then they started shooting and an unknown number were killed, Mbaissa said. \nWitnesses have related similar grisly tales from several other villages, saying hundreds were killed, many shot execution-style at point-blank range. \nNigeria, Africa's most populous nation, is riven with ethnic, religious and political divides that frequently flare into violence. \nFighting between Tivs and Jukuns, mainly over farmland, has raged intermittently for more than a decade. Fulanis entered the feud more recently, on the Jukun side. In the past few weeks, violence has intensified along the borders of the states of Benue, Taraba and Nassarawa, with each side burning villages of the other. \nAt the Agasha camp, 45-year-old William Ishor and his family curled up in stunned exhaustion in the shade of a mango tree, newly arrived Saturday after a seven-day trek fleeing Jukun fighters who attacked their village of Tala. \nThe Jukun attacked suddenly a week ago, burning down houses and screaming "Tivs out," said Ishor, whose family like many others in his village are Tiv. \nIshor fled through forests and farms, surviving on raw manioc and corn picked along the way. "We ran and walked. We slept wherever we happened to be when night found us," he said. \nAlong a pothole-pitted road from Benue's capital, Makurdi, all but two of a dozen villages have been completely burned down, whether in ethnic fighting or by soldiers. \nUniformed troops traveling in armored personnel carriers destroyed seven towns over three days starting Monday, killing 130 people in just one village, state Gov. George Akume said Thursday. A federal lawmaker representing some of the destroyed villages said Friday that 300 were killed in all, including 150 in Gbeji. \nState officials say the soldiers attacked in reprisal for the abduction and killing of 19 soldiers by Tiv tribal fighters earlier this month. A witness to the kidnappings, who asked to remain anonymous, alleged the abducted soldiers had taken part in the burning of Tiv houses by Jukun fighters. \nAt a funeral for the soldiers shortly before the massacre began, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo vowed to punish those responsible for the soldiers' deaths. \nBut defense officials deny they ordered any revenge attacks. Obasanjo's two-year-old elected government has promised to "restrain" soldiers if any are discovered to have committed excesses. \nA federal lawmaker, House of Representatives member George Suswam, accused Obasanjo on Friday of ordering the killings and called for an international investigation. Human rights groups, including Amnesty International, have also called for an independent inquiry. \nJournalists visiting Gbeji on Friday saw a dozen freshly dug shallow graves where residents said more than 60 people had been hurriedly buried. Another 90 bodies were buried elsewhere, residents said. The smell of decaying flesh drifted through the air and dry blood still stained the ground. \nIt was unclear whether fighting was still taking place on Saturday because the scenes of fighting are remote. Tribal militias and soldiers have blocked roads from mainly-Tiv Benue to Jukun-dominated areas of Taraba state. \nA hospital in Makurdi, the Benue state capital, was treating a number of wounded civilians, including Elizabeth Isaac Alogo, whose hands were both hacked off in recent weeks by machete-wielding Fulani fighters who attacked her home village in Nassarawa state, to the north of Benue. Alogo's 16-year-old son was killed in the attack and her teenage daughter, whose hands had also been badly cut, later died in hospital. \n"I'm getting better," Alogo told journalists, grimacing between spoonfuls of porridge fed to her by a nurse.