Representatives of a Shia Muslim sect in northwestern Nigeria said on Tuesday that hundreds of its members were killed by the military in a massacre over the weekend.
The government has disputed the death toll, acknowledging that at least seven members of the sect were killed but refusing to provide updated casualty figures. Still, the killings appeared to add a dangerous new dimension to the sectarian violence that has long bedevilled Nigeria.
The government has been battling an insurgency in northeastern Nigeria by Boko Haram, a Sunni Muslim extremist group, for years. Shias, by contrast, are a tiny minority of the country’s Muslims.
On Tuesday, a leading human rights advocate, Chidi Odinkalu, called the killings of members of the Shiite sect a “massacre”, while the Iranian news media reported that Iran’s government, which sees itself as a protector of Shias worldwide, had demanded an explanation.
Abdullahi Tumburkai, a Shia journalist, said he had counted more than 830 bodies in the mortuary in Zaria, the headquarters of the sect, called the Islamic Movement in Nigeria.
A spokesman for the sect, Ibrahim Musa, said that as many as 1,000 of its members had been killed, and accused the army of covering up the death toll, saying that soldiers had been taking the bodies of the dead to an “unknown destination.”
At a news conference here Monday, an army commander, Maj. Gen. Adeniyi Oyebade, said that soldiers opened fire on Saturday after members of the sect threatened a convoy that was taking the army’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai, on an official visit to an emir in the region.
“They started throwing dangerous missiles, stones, machete and all kinds of traditional or crude weapons,” Gen. Oyebade said of the sect’s members, adding that security forces concluded that Gen. Buratai’s life “was under threat, and they had no other option than to force their way through the blockage, including the use of lethal weapons”.
Gen. Oyebade said the army acted “within the rules of engagement permissible by law”.
At the news conference, the police commissioner for Kaduna state, which includes Zaria, blamed the sect for provoking the bloodshed, saying its members had no regard for the government and had failed to inform security forces of what he called their “procession”.
But human rights advocates have denounced the killings as an overreaction by the military, which has been accused of many abuses during the fight against Boko Haram.
The founder of the sect, Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky, 62, was detained on Sunday as clashes between security forces and sect members continued. As photos of a bloodied Zakzaky circulated on social media, there were reports of protests by Shias in cities across Nigeria, while members of his sect blocked a highway linking the capital, Abuja, with Zaria to the north.
An army spokesman, Col. Sani Kukasheka Usman, said that Zakzaky and his wife and son were being held in protective custody — not killed, as rumours circulating online had reported.
The impact of the violence rippled beyond Nigeria’s borders. Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called his Nigerian counterpart, Geoffrey Onyeama, for an explanationnews media. — New York Times News Service
