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Thursday, 2 March, 2000, 13:37 GMT
Eyewitness: Aftermath of Kaduna slaughter
![]() Beaten to death and thrown in a well
By Ben Brown in Kaduna
Kaduna is a city that stinks of death. Many corpses have been thrown into mass graves, but some still have not been buried. We were shown one body down a well. His name was Ardo, a father of two, killed as he tried to run for his life.
It all started when Christians set off on a march through Kaduna last week. A local cameraman captured the fatal demonstration on film.
They were protesting against Muslims who want to bring in strict Sharia law, the Islamic code of justice. The march turned violent, with vicious clashes erupting between Christians and Muslims. Entire districts of the city were set on fire. People were burned alive.
Overwhelmed
This was slaughter on a savage scale. It has led to fears the violence could destabilise Nigeria and its new democratic government.
We saw the survivors - alive, but only just. Many have terrible burns. Some are suffering from gunshot wounds. Others were attacked with machetes, swords, even bows and arrows.
The local hospital cannot cope. It has dealt with so many casualties that it is running out of antibiotics, bandages and drips.
'Old enough to die'
He is only 12 years old - as far as the mob was concerned, he was old enough to die.
His name is Yacoubu Hudu - a Muslim attacked by Christians, but in Kaduna, there are victims like this on both sides.
What we do know is that it ended with Christians and Muslims alike hunting each other down and murdering each other in cold blood.
Killing zone
It is now totally devastated. It looks like it is just been through a war.
"A mob shot my dad," he says. "Then, as he attempted to escape, they finished him off with machetes."
Next door, a woman called Halima told me her husband too was butchered. He had tried to warn her and the children to run, she says, but youths put a tyre round his neck and set fire to him. She says she is too traumatised to look after her baby and wants someone else to take it.
Catastrophic danger
They are terrified Kaduna's killing spree may not be over yet.
"We want to go. We are Christians in this house," a women told me. "They don't ask for anything, they are just killing us for nothing." As she and many others flee, Nigeria is holding its breath. The violence here has already spread, but if it ignites a whole new wave of communal killing, the results in this, the most populated nation in Africa, could be truly catastrophic.
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