JOS (Nigeria), Dec 1: Two thousand angry youths stormed a mosque in the riot-torn city of Jos on Monday as a top parliament official appealed for an end to religious troubles that have left hundreds dead, witnesses said.

Thousands of troops and police patrolled the streets of the central city after the clashes between rival Christians and Muslims.

Youths entered the main mosque as speaker of the House of Representatives Dimeji Bankole made an appeal to Muslim leaders for calm.

The youths shouted for the removal of Plateau state governor Jonah Jang and his government before they left after an intervention by Muslim leaders and the mosque was cordoned off.

“You must put your anger in your pockets,” Bankole told them, adding that parliamentarians would do everything to “make sure that the people who did this are properly dealt with”.

A night-time curfew remained in effect in Jos with a complete curfew imposed in four districts of the city that saw the worst of the fighting on Friday and Saturday.

A Red Cross official spoke of “well over 300 people killed” and Khaled Abubakar, an imam at the central mosque, and another Muslim official spoke of about 400 bodies taken to the mosque. A Christian clergyman spoke of “several hundred” killed.Corpses that were still visible in large numbers on Sunday had all been removed from the streets of the town and buried by Monday.—AFP