At least 100 people, and likely more, have been killed in an outburst of religious violence in Nigeria — some of the dead are just babies, according to government officials. News agencies are reporting death tolls ranging from 100 to 300. From the New Zealand Herald:

“Rioters armed with machetes slaughtered more than 200 people overnight as religious violence flared anew between Christians and Muslims in central Nigeria, witnesses said.

Hundreds of people fled their homes, fearing reprisal attacks.

The bodies of the dead – including many women and children – lined dusty streets in three mostly Christian villages south of the regional capital of Jos, local journalists and a civil rights group said. They said at least 200 bodies had been counted by Sunday afternoon.

Torched homes smouldered after the 3am attacks that a region-wide curfew enforced by the country’s police and military should have stopped.

The killings represent the latest religious violence in an area once known as Nigeria’s top tourist destination, adding to the tally of thousands already killed in the last decade in the name of religious and political ambitions.

Jos lies in Nigeria’s ‘middle belt,’ where dozens of ethnic groups mingle in a band of fertile and hotly contested land separating the Muslim north from the predominantly Christian south.

In Dogo Nahawa, a village five kilometres south of Jos, residents said the dead included a 4-day-old infant. Those who survived claimed their attackers shouted at them in Hausa and Fulani – two local languages used by Muslims.

A spokesman for Plateau state where Jos is located, Gregory Yenlong, said police were seeking to arrest Saleh Bayari, the regional leader of the Fulanis, because Bayari’s comments incited the attack. He offered no other details.

But the chairman of the local Fulani organisation denied that his people were involved in the attack.”

Agence France-Presse reports on the red alert issued by the government in response:

“Acting President Goodluck Jonathan immediately placed security agencies in the region on a red alert, an official statement said in Abuja.

Jonathan ‘has placed all the security services in Plateau (State) and neighbouring states on red alert so as to stem any cross border dimensions to this latest conflict,’ his office said in a statement.

‘He has also directed that the security services undertake strategic initiatives to confront and defeat these roving bands of killers,’ it added.

Dan Manjang, an advisor to the Plateau state government confirmed the deployment of troops in the area.”