At least 66 people were killed in the southern Nigerian town of Sagamu, near the commercial capital, Lagos, in fighting on Sunday between members of the rival Hausa and Yoruba communities, police said yesterday.
Shortly after midday yesterday 36 bodies lay piled up in the Sagamu mosque, frequented by members of the Muslim Hausa community.
Thirty other bodies had already been collected and taken for burial, a policeman said.
Fighting broke out in the town on Saturday night after a Hausa woman from northern Nigeria was killed when she was caught watching Yoruba rites and thereby breaking a local taboo.
"One of those killed this morning was a Yoruba man mistaken for a Hausa by his kinsmen because of the way he was dressed," Mr Haabib Sadeeq, a Shagamu resident, said.
More armed riot police were moved into Sagamu yesterday to reinforce hundreds patrolling since Sunday to prevent further violence between heavily armed mobs from the biggest two of Nigeria's more than 200 ethnic groups.
Ethnic clashes are frequent in the country of 108 million, but those between Hausas and Yorubas have gained added significance since the end of 15 years of Hausa-dominated military rule on May 29th, when Gen Olusegun Obasanjo, a Yoruba, took office.
"It's been two days of madness in this town. It's even too early to talk of the final death toll as I'm not sure anyone knows for sure yet," one local government official said.
The Sabo quarter of the town of 300,000 where most of the Hausa community lives was particularly badly scarred. Shops, mosques, hotels and a hospital had been burned while wrecked cars littered the roadsides.
Black circles of ash on the streets recorded where victims had been set on fire and burned to death. Scores of Yoruba residents in Sabo fled the district yesterday.