JOS: 14 killed in violence

At least 14 people have been killed in spiraling violence between Christian and Muslim youths in central Nigeria's volatile Plateau state since Sunday night, authorities said on Monday.

The latest deaths bring the total number of people killed -- in violence between gangs and each other or security forces -- in the past week to at least 50.
Plateau state spokesman Yiljap Abraham took journalists to see the bodies from two attacks, one in the village of Zakaleu, where 10 people were killed, and the other near a village called Kuru. Several houses had also been burned down.
"People are just using this situation to commit crime," Abraham told Reuters. "They are hacking people up, stealing their motorcycles, breaking into shops, looting, killing. These are acts of criminality. It has nothing to do with religion."

The cycle of violence in the ethnically and religiously-mixed area started when Christian youths attacked some Muslims last Monday as they gathered to celebrate the end of Ramadan in the city of Jos, capital of Plateau state, the military said.
Youths hacked a family of eight to death on Sunday morning, local officials said. On Sunday night, gangs in three vans pulled up to the village of Zakaleu and attacked residents, said Timothy Buba, chairman of northern Jos local council.
"Seven lives were lost. People and the houses were set on fire and even from the distance, you can see some smoke," Buba said.
"We... believe that the attack was carried out with the sole aim that the people of this community would retaliate... and provoke reprisals without end."
Plateau state straddles the "Middle Belt" between Nigeria's mostly Muslim north and largely Christian south.
Nigeria has a roughly equal Christian-Muslim population and more than 200 ethnic groups live side-by-side in the West African country largely peacefully, but periodic violence flares up in the Middle Belt.
The tensions in Plateau are rooted in fierce competition for local political power and control of fertile farmlands, tensions which local government policies have done little to calm.
The latest unrest is an unwelcome challenge for President Goodluck Jonathan, who is already dealing with near-daily attacks in the northeast by the Islamist sect Boko Haram.
Authorities have blamed the group for an Aug. 26 bombing of U.N. offices in Abuja that killed 23 people