KADUNA, Nov 23: The number of people killed in riots sparked by an article on the Miss World beauty pageant has risen to 200, a civil rights group monitoring the unrest in this northern Nigerian city said on Saturday.

Shehu Sani, director of the Civil Rights Congress (CRC), told AFP that another 600 people had been injured in clashes with security forces and rioting between Muslim and Christian youths.

Sani said the figure had been collated by a team of activists monitoring the fighting and recording evidence of righst abuses. He said 15 churches and 8 mosques had been burned to the ground in the clashes stretching from late Thursday until Saturday morning.

The Red Cross refused to give a fresh casualty figure on Saturday, saying that it wanted to avoid provoking a further violent backlash, but its death toll for Thursday night’s violence alone was 100, suggesting that the CRC figure is plausible.

Emmanuel Ijewere, president of the Nigerian Red Cross, said some 4,500 people have been driven from their homes in the fighting and that 320 were being treated in hospital.

“Obviously there have been deaths as well, but it would be irresponsible to put a figure on casualties. We don’t want to increase tensions.

Witnesses told AFP that fighting had continued overnight and as the sun rose on Saturday gunfire could be heard around the poor, religiously-mixed southern suburbs.

A local reporter told AFP he had seen 10 recently killed bodies and residents fleeing the fighting for the safety of a brewery complex said that gangs were murdering people in their homes.

Two years ago rioting between Muslims and Christians in Kaduna left more than 2,000 people dead.

The latest violence was triggered on Wednesday when Muslim youths protesting against an article on the Miss World beauty pageant burned down a newspaper office in the city.

It has since, however, degenerated into a street war between Muslims and Christians and between demonstrators and security forces. Troops and police have shot demonstrators, witnesses say.—AFP