நைஜீரியாவில் கிறிஸ்துவர்கள் மீது இஸ்லாமியர் கலவரம் - 3 பேர் பலி

கிறிஸ்துவ மாணவர்கள் முகம்மது நபியை கேலிசித்திரம் வரைந்ததற்காக நைஜீரிய இஸ்லாமிய மாணவர்கள் கலவரத்தில் இறங்கியதில் ஒரு போலீஸ் அதிகாரி உட்பட மூவர் மரணமடைந்தனர்

Three killed in riots over Mohammed's caricature: police

Three persons including a police officer were killed after Muslim students rioted over a caricature of Prophet Mohammed by their Christian colleagues, police and teachers said Friday.

Students of Government Secondary School Sumaila, some 76 kilometres (47 miles) south of the northern city of Kano, went on the rampage late Thursday, after a Christian student suspended for two weeks returned to the school.

He had been suspended for having drawn a caricature of the Prophet and posted it on a wall inside the school.

"Two people and a police inspector have been killed in the violence while the divisional police station and everything inside including ammunition have been burnt by the rioters", Kano police chief Aminu Yesufu told reporters outside the burnt police station.

He said aAbout 20 others were badly wounded, including the divisional police officer, who suffered a deep machete cut to the head.

Police had arrested 25 people and opened an investigation, he added.

"The students began chanting Allahu Akbar (God is the greatest) when the Christian student returned and pursued him to lynch him", Sadiq Haruna, a teacher at the school, told an AFP reporter who visited the town on Friday.

"The Christian escaped in taking refuge in the local police station but hundreds of angry Muslim students attacked and set on fire the premises after the police refused to hand him over," Haruna said.

The whereabouts of the christian student were still not known.

This is the second time in a week in the mainly Muslim northern Nigeria that an allegation of blasphemy against the Prophet Mohammed has sparked violent protests and an attack on the police.

On Thursday last week police shot dead one rioter during rioting irate Muslim youth in the city of Yana (Bauchi state) over alleged blasphemy by a Christian woman.

According to Bauchi police chief, Adnan Tolman Gaya, Yana police shot into the crowd to disperse a mob that calling for the lynching of the women who besieged and burnt the police station. The woman escaped unhurt.

After the death of the youth, the other rioters went on rampage and looted houses of policemen in town and burnt shops belonging to christians.

The police station was also burned down during the unrest. Officers arrested 44 people.

The tension between the Christian and Muslim communities is particularly high in the north of Nigeria and periodically flares up into violence.