Mail & Guardian reporter
A fragile truce held Thursday in the Nigerian city of Jos after a week of street battles between Muslims and Christians left more than 500 people dead.
Fighting flared on Tuesday after Muslim residents in the city’s Nassarawa district came out to celebrate the attacks in the United States.
Community and religious leaders met with state officials to see how battered community ties might start to be repaired.
“The situation now is calm. Order has been restored,” Third Armoured Division spokesperson Lieutenant-Colonel Ayo Olaniyan said.
Troops, who were deployed to the city at the weekend after the violence erupted last Friday, are maintaining their patrols and continuing to man checkpoints, he said.
Humanitarian and religious sources confirmed the death toll of more than 500 reported earlier by a Nigerian newspaper, with more than 1000 wounded.
“That toll is not an exaggeration. That is how many we think it is,” said an official with a relief organisation who asked not to be named.
“Community leaders are putting together lists of people who have been lost but it will take time. We think it is certainly around or over 500,” said a leader of a religious community.
The state-run Daily Times reported Wednesday that more than 500 victims of the violence in Jos had been given a mass burial after dark late Monday.
Relations between Muslims and Christians had been strained for months after thousands of Christians left Muslim-dominated cities seeking refuge from the imposition of Islamic law further north.
A few weeks ago they were worsened sharply by the nomination by the federal government of a Muslim man to a lucrative post in the mainly Christian city heading a state government anti-poverty programme.