NIGERIA: About a dozen people killed by police have been exhumed in the Nigerian city of Kaduna to help check claims by residents that the bodies were those of protesters in a strike last week, officials said.
Troops were briefly deployed in Kaduna on Monday when residents set off a stampede after seeing what they thought were protesters being buried by the police, who say the dead were suspected armed robbers killed in previous gun battles.
The police had outraged residents in the northern city after they shot dead a young boy during last week's general strike that was called by labour unions.
"A committee has been set up to investigate and prove that these men were armed robbers who had clashed with police and who were being buried routinely," said a Kaduna state spokesman, Mr Muktar Sirajo, by telephone from Kaduna city.
He said troops were sent back to their barracks after calm was restored on Monday.
He added that 25 people who had been arrested in Kaduna during the strike had been released on bail.
Kaduna, one of the country's ethno-religious flashpoints, is the scene of bitter fighting between Christians and Muslims which killed scores of people in 2000 and 2001.
At least 11,000 people have been killed in sectarian violence in Africa's most populous country since 1999 when President Olusegun Obasanjo, once a military ruler of Nigeria, was elected after 15 years of military dictatorship. - (Reuters)