Nigeria hospitals struggle to treat machete wounds

[April 20, 2011]  KADUNA, Nigeria (AP) -- Idrif Ibrahim tried to outrun the angry mob, but they nearly severed his left hand with machetes before leaving him for dead in a northern Nigerian town where postelection violence has erupted this week.

A Christian hid Ibrahim, a Muslim, inside a car and brought him to a hospital in Kaduna, where overwhelmed staff had to use cardboard boxes Wednesday to make splints for the wounded.

More than 200 people have been brought to St. Gerard's Hospital, and at least 20 have died. In the hospital's morgue lay the bodies of victims shot, burned and in one case disemboweled in rioting that swept Kaduna in the aftermath of Saturday's presidential vote.

Muslim rioters burned homes, churches and police stations after results showed Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian, had beaten his closest Muslim opponent in Saturday's vote. Reprisal attacks by Christians began almost immediately, with one mob allegedly tearing a home apart to look for a Quran to prove the occupants were Muslims before setting the building ablaze.

Muslim presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari called the violence "sad, unfortunate and totally unwarranted."

"I must emphasize that this is purely a political matter, and it should not in any way be turned into an ethnic, religious or regional one," Buhari said late Tuesday.

Mobs also engineered two prison breaks, burned down the home of one powerful traditional ruler and attempted to destroy the home of Nigeria's vice president. Authorities have afraid inciting more violence by releasing casualty figures.

Nigeria has a long history of violent and rigged polls since it abandoned military rule and embraced democracy 12 years ago. However, observers largely said Saturday's presidential election appeared to be fair, and the U.S. State Department said it was a significant improvement over the last poll in 2007.

The nation of 150 million people is divided between the Christian-dominated south and the Muslim north. A dozen states across Nigeria's north have Islamic Shariah law in place, though the area remains under the control of secular state governments.

Thousands have been killed in religious violence in the past decade. In Kaduna alone, more than 2,000 died as the government moved to enact Islamic Shariah law in 2000. In 2002, rioting over a newspaper article suggesting the prophet Muhammad would have married a Miss World pageant contestant killed dozens here. The roots of the sectarian conflict across the north often have more to do with struggles for political and economic dominance.

Many northerners wanted the country's ruling party to nominate a Muslim candidate this year because Jonathan had only taken power because the Muslim elected leader died before finishing his term. However, Jonathan prevailed in the ruling party's primary and became its candidate for president.

The violence in the north has all but halted bus service to the region. Okereke Matthew, a ticket seller for First Tarzan Motors in Lagos, said his company was not going to the northern cities of Kaduna and Kano.

"The crisis is affecting our business. The buses we have in Kano haven't come back. Nobody is traveling to Kano," he said.

[Associated Press; By JON GAMBRELL]

Associated Press writer Yinka Ibukun in Lagos, Nigeria contributed to this report.

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