Children killed in Nigeria fighting

Most of the people killed in clashes between security forces and rival factions of a radical Islamic sect in the northern Nigeria were children. A large number of those killed in yesterday’s (Monday) fighting were boys, said aid organisation The Red Cross in the northern city of Bauchi.

Red Cross representative, Adamu Abubakar h told the BBC that 39 people had died and that at least 65 per cent were students aged from nine to 15. Sixteen people were also admitted to hospital, among them a seven-year-old who died on Tuesday morning, he added. Police have now taken the bodies away and arrested 20 suspects, nine adults and 11 children. Officials said that if any children had died, it would have been because they were hit by vehicles or trampled.

Violence broke out when local people in Zango, a suburb of Bauchi, called the police complaining about aggressive preaching after a ban on open-air preaching, introduced after an uprising earlier this year, was broken. Members of a fringe Muslim sect known as Kala-Kato went on the rampage demanding the release of its leader. The State Commissioner of Police Alhaji Atiku Yusuf Kafur, said the force seized all sorts of dangerous weapons.He said these include "bomb making tools, explosive devices, two AK 47 rifles, seven rounds of ammunition and hundreds of dangerous weapons of various types as well as some with blood stains".

Preaching at an open-air gathering, after which members of the Kala Kato sect threatened to kill locals who would  not join them or leave the area, the Red Cross said, triggered the crisis. It added that an army officer sent from a  nearby base to speak to the sect's leaders was killed with a machete. Most of the dead were children from outside Bauchi who had been sent to study Arabic and the Koran with local clerics, Mr Abubakar said. But government spokesman Sanusi Mohammed, told the BBC that most of the people killed were adult members of the sect who had attacked the security forces."Most likely, those children that might have been killed were probably crushed when running away from the scene, or they were victims of head-on collisions with cars," he said."But I definitely don't think it was security officers that went to quell the rioting who shot them down."Mr Mohammed said the clashes had been a result of a "misunderstanding within the religious sect" about its leadership, and that it had quickly escalated.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children