Nigeria sends in troops after attacks kill 500

JOS, Nigeria, (AFP/Reuters) - Nigerias government sent in troops to the flashpoint northern Jos region Monday after clashes involving Muslim herders and Christian villagers that officials say killed at least 500 people.
Under fire for failing to prevent another outburst of communal violence only weeks after hundreds died in Muslim-Christian clashes, authorities said they had arrested scores of people in connection with the attacks.
Soldiers patrolled the central Nigerian city and aid workers tried to assess the death toll after attacks on outlying communities.
Newspapers reported that Muslim residents of the villages had been warned by phone text message, two days prior to the attack, so they could make good their escape.
Witnesses meanwhile described how the mainly women and children victims in Sundays three-hour systematic orgy of violence were caught in animal traps and fishing nets as they tried to flee their attackers, who hacked them to death.
The official death toll was initially put at a little over 100 but Dan Manjang, an advisor to the Plateau state government, said it had shot up.
We have been able to make 95 arrests but at the same time over 500 people have been killed in this heinous act, Dan Manjang told AFP.
Government-run radio also reported that 500 people had been slaughtered in a raid on three villages on the fringes of Jos, capital of Plateau state.
Witnesses and local rights activists put the figure at between 200 and 250. Much of the violence was centred around the village of Dogo Nahawa where armed men from the mainly Muslim Fulani ethnic group set fire to straw-thatched mud huts before embarking on the killing rampage in the early hours of Sunday.
Frank Tatgun, a resident of Dogo Nahawa, said that he had seen two armoured vehicles and three military trucks arrive in the village and scores of troops were now on patrol.
A curfew which was imposed after Januarys unrest is supposed to be still in place but Christian leaders said the authorities had done nothing to prevent the bloodshed.
Shortly after the armed men besieged Dogo Nahawa ...we contacted the soldiers at exactly 1:30am. But we were shocked to find out that the soldiers did not react until about 3:30am after the attackers had finished their job and left, Plateau State Christian Elders Consultative Forum (PSCEF) said in a statement.
Witnesses said armed men had scared the victims out of their homes by firing into the air but most of the killings were as a result of machete attacks.
Survivors said the attackers were able to separate the Fulanis from the Beroms by chanting 'nage, the Fulani word for cattle. Those who failed to respond in the same language were hacked to death.
Other residents said the few Muslims in the villages received sms texts warning them to vacate the area before the attack. Many of the victims in Sundays attacks were hacked to death as they tried to flee into woodland. Rights activists said the attack appeared to be a revenge for the January attacks in which mainly Muslims were killed.
I think its a reprisal from the Fulanis for the earlier attacks, said activist Shehu Sani.
Locals said that the attacks on Sunday were the result of a spiralling feud between the Fulani and the rival Berom clan which had been first ignited by a theft of cattle and then further fuelled by a deadly revenge attack.
Acting President Goodluck Jonathans office said that the security services in Plateau and neighbouring states had been placed on red alert to ensure that the violence did not spread.