Soldiers patrolled the streets in Nigeria's mostly Muslim north today, and aid workers began to assess the toll from deadly rioting against President Goodluck Jonathan's election victory.
At least 33 people in major cities alone have been killed, according to a tally from witnesses and rescue workers, but the overall death toll is believed to be much higher.
Hundreds have been injured and thousands displaced by violence across the mostly-Muslim north after Goodluck Jonathan won weekend elections. His rival, northerner and ex-military ruler Muhammadu Buhari, says the vote was rigged.
Charred corpses lay in the Gonin-Gora neighbourhood of Kaduna today, one of them apparently "necklaced" with a burning tyre. Health workers had already collected a dozen bodies there. One picked up a severed foot.
"We're yet to finish, we have just started the work," said Zacharia Shamaki, Kaduna state environment commissioner, as health workers put corpses into an ambulance.
Residents blamed Mr Buhari, whose party has refused to accept election results which say Jonathan won Saturday's election with 59 per cent of the vote.
"How can he allege rigging. Jonathan won across the nation. They should accept the results rather than killing and destroying people and property," said Olaoye Ade, who fled with his wife and children to a police barracks in Kano. "I am here with my family in the barracks instead of celebrating the nation's new-found democracy."
The election results show how polarised the country of 150 million is, with Mr Buhari (68) sweeping the north and Mr Jonathan (53) winning the largely Christian south.
Observers have called the poll the fairest in decades in Africa's most populous nation, which has a long history of votes marred by fraud and intimidation.
Diplomats, analysts and ruling party supporters criticised the former general, who has strong grass roots support in the north, for failing to come out clearly to call for calm and condemn the violence being perpetrated in his name.
"He has not asked anyone to engage in any violent conduct. He had the capacity to call people out, and he didn't. He understands that people feel cheated," Mr Buhari's spokesman told Reuters.
"People are angry because they saw the results at the polling stations and saw different results announced in Abuja."
Mr Jonathan appealed for unity in an acceptance speech broadcast to the nation yesterday, saying the nation must "quickly move away from partisan battlegrounds".
Security analysts said they believed the curfews and a show of military force in the north should contain the violence for now but feared that governorship elections in the 36 states in a week's time could become another flash point.
Reuters