KADUNA, Nigeria—Police opened fire Tuesday on unarmed Shiite Muslim protesters in the northern city of Kaduna, leaving three dead, the spokesman for Shiites in Nigeria said, as activists accused soldiers of having killed hundreds of Shiites in “a massacre” in a nearby town in recent days.
But police spokesman Zubairu Abdullahi denied any killings and said Shiites tried to attack a police station.
“We only repel the sect who attempted to attack our station,” he said. “We only used tear gas to disperse them. Maybe in the process of dispersing them, they sustained injury, I don’t know.”
Spokesman Ibrahim Musa of the Shiite Islamic Movement in Nigeria said three people were killed and 10 wounded when police shot “peaceful protesters.” They were condemning the mass killings over the weekend and early Monday in the ancient Muslim university town of Zaria, and demanding the military release their leader, Ibraheem Zakzaky.
The bloodshed in Zaria was yet another blow to Africa’s most populous nation, already beset by a 6-year-old insurgency waged by Boko Haram, a violent Islamic group which is at odds with the Shiites and others who oppose its extremist views.
Amnesty International said in a statement late Tuesday that the shooting of members of the Shiite group in Zaria “must be urgently investigated ... and anyone found responsible for unlawful killings must be brought to justice.”
“Whilst the final death toll is unclear, there is no doubt of that there has been a substantial loss of life at the hands of the military,” said M.K. Ibrahim, director of Amnesty International, Nigeria.
Musa said soldiers on Monday carried away about 200 bodies from around Zakzaky’s home in Zaria, and hundreds more corpses are in the mortuary. Human rights activists said hundreds upon hundreds, perhaps as many as 1,000, have been killed.
The army said troops attacked sites in Zaria after 500 Shiites blocked the convoy of Nigeria’s army chief, and tried to kill him on Saturday. A report from the military police said some Shiites were crawling through tall grass toward Gen. Tukur Buratai’s vehicle “with the intent to attack the vehicle with (a) petrol bomb” while others “suddenly resorted to firing gunshots from the direction of the mosque.”
