Nigeria counts costs of riots

LAGOS, Nigeria -- Dozens of people are feared dead after several days of clashes between farmers and nomadic tribesmen in northeastern Nigeria.

Local residents said fighting between Mambila indigenous farmers and nomadic Fulani had flared sporadically since New Year's Eve around Tonga Maina village on the Mambila Plateau of Taraba State.

Residents of nearby towns contacted by telephone could not give a precise death toll, but national newspapers put the figure at between 30 and 50.

The violence is the latest bout of ethnic bloodletting to hit Africa's most populous nation.

Multi-ethnic Nigeria, with a population of more than 110 million divided into about 250 tribes, is struggling with its worst cycle of ethnic bloodletting for more than 30 years.

At the end of December, more than 20 people were killed and scores injured in an attack on a central Nigerian village by an ethnic Hausa-Fulani militia.

More than 500 people were killed in three days of Christian-Muslim fighting last September in the city of Jos, Plateau state capital, and surrounding districts.

40 arrested

Much of the fighting has been underpinned by religious and political differences, notably in the largely Islamic north of the country.

The introduction of strict Muslim sharia law by a dozen states has triggered Muslim-Christian fighting which has killed more than 2,000 people in two years.

Land is at the centre of much of the violence in northeastern and central Nigeria, where peasant minority groups have been jostling for farmland with livestock rearers.

Police in Yola, capital of neighbouring Adamawa state, said a team of officers from Yola was heading for Mambila on Tuesday to assess the situation.

The independent Guardian newspaper said the fighting had forced many Fulani to take their livestock across the border into the neighbouring West African state of Cameroon.

It said the fighting flared after Mambila youths confronted a group they said was part of a militia hired by the Fulani in Tonga Maina village.

Riot police deployed in the area have arrested more than 40 people, newspapers said.