Religious violence kills over 200 in Nigeria

Torched homes smoldered after the 3 a.m. attacks that a region-wide curfew enforced by the country’s police and military should have stopped.

The killings represent the latest religious violence in an area once known as Nigeria’s top tourist destination, adding to the tally of thousands killed in the last decade in the name of religious and political ambitions.

Jos lies in Nigeria’s “middle belt,’’ where dozens of ethnic groups mingle in a band of fertile and hotly contested land separating the Muslim north from the predominantly Christian south.

In Dogo Nahawa, a village 3 miles south of Jos, residents said the dead included a 4-day-old infant. Those who survived said their attackers shouted at them in Hausa and Fulani - two local languages used by Muslims.

A spokesman for Plateau state where Jos is located, Gregory Yenlong, said police were seeking to arrest Saleh Bayari, the regional leader of the Fulanis, because Bayari’s comments incited the attack. He offered no other details.

But the chairman of the local Fulani organization denied that his people were involved in the attack.