Map locating the troubled town of Jos. Niger has officially protested to neighbouring Nigeria following accusations that it allowed "mercenaries" to take part in sectarian clashes that left hundreds dead. (AFP/Graphic)The Muslims and Christians of Jos -- The Economist
The government of Africa’s most populous country is slow to stem violence
THE Katako market was still smouldering five days after it was razed to the ground by a mob of Christian youths. The bodies of ten people trapped in the fires that destroyed it had already been taken away and buried. Muslim men kicked up plumes of dust as they shuffled through the ashes of their stalls, which a week earlier had numbered more than 5,000. A dirty young man searched through a pile of blackened onions, picking out those that were not inedibly charred.
A few hundred yards away, students and teachers at an Augustinian monastery were also sorting through wreckage. Their monastery had been attacked on the same day, just 30 minutes later, by a group of Muslim youths. The monk in charge narrowly escaped death when a Molotov cocktail thrown into his tiny room happened to land in the toilet.
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