KADUNA, Nov 22: At least 105 people have been killed since Thursday in riots in Nigeria stoked by Muslim fury over the staging of the Miss World contest next month, Red Cross officials said on Friday.

More than 500 people have also been injured in the street riots in the northern city of Kaduna, where enraged youths have torched several buildings.

The violence resembled massive sectarian bloodletting in the region two years ago that killed thousands.

Nigeria won the right to stage the contest after Nigerian Agbani Darego won the last event in South Africa.

Residents of Kaduna, a city scarred by burned out buildings and with overturned cars littering its streets, said sporadic shooting could be heard on Friday morning as soldiers and police battled rioters despite a 24-hour curfew.

Kaduna residents said Muslims were accusing authorities of trying to bar them from Friday prayers with the curfew.

“The 105 are identifiable deaths,” Nigerian Red Cross president Emmanuel Ijewere said, adding that the tally came from his field officers in Kaduna.

He suggested the toll could rise further, saying: “There are some houses that have not been entered. It is possible that there are injured in these houses.”

Red Cross spokesman Patrick Bawa said 521 injured people had been evacuated to Kaduna hospitals by Thursday night.

The riots erupted on Wednesday when rampaging Muslim youths burned the Kaduna offices of the independent Lagos-based daily This Day, whose Nov 16 article sparked the violence.

The unrest quickly turned into a general protest against Miss World contest, to be held in Abuja.

After the shooting on Friday morning in Kaduna, the streets of the city of four million people were teeming by midday. Residents said they were defying the curfew in anger at the local governor.

“People are angry because the governor refused to receive protesters who came to deliver a petition against the newspaper article,” a resident said.

“Instead security forces fired teargas and opened fire, killing five people right there at the gate of government house,” said the resident.—Reuters