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.By Shyamantha Asokan, Correspondent / CSM May 25, 2010
Jos, Nigeria
Patience Dassah, a smartly dressed young Nigerian, has recently had trouble getting a taxi. But her trouble with okadas, the motorcycles that zip through the streets here in Africa's most populous country, does not lie with the typical traffic jams or fuel shortages
"I live in a mostly Christian area, and now my Muslim okada driver will not take me there," she says, explaining that he is too afraid of being attacked or even killed. "He won't even pick up my calls."
Ms. Dassah lives in Jos, a city in central Nigeria now caught in a cycle of religious and ethnic violence.
Sandwiched between the country's largely Muslim north and mostly Christian south, Jos has endured a decade of periodic clashes between followers of the two faiths, a conflict that has flared up in recent months.
In two massacres this year, gangs with machetes from both sides descended on nearby villages and killed hundreds.
A boosted Army presence and nighttime curfew in Plateau State, of which Jos is the capital, has reduced the risk of more large-scale attacks. But some residents of Jos are resorting to "secret killings," in which a lone Christian is lured to a secluded Muslim part of town – or vice versa – and killed.
They are the reason Dassah says her okada driver no longer answers her calls. And they appear to show once again that a heavy military presence is not enough to quell the religious violence that plagues the No. 3 supplier of oil to the United States.
Targeted killings of ethnic individuals
Secret killings have been on the rise since this year's second massacre, in early March, say Christian and Muslim community leaders, government officials, and police.
"We have started receiving reports of corpses being found here and there. It started happening after the March 7 incident," says Femi Oyeleye, the head of the state's criminal investigation department, referring to coordinated mob attacks by Muslims on members of the mainly Christian Berom ethnic group.
Those March killings are said to have been reprisals for religious clashes that killed scores in January.
According to Mr. Oyeleye, 25 corpses unrelated to any major attacks were found in Jos during March and April – far above the average rate of three corpses a month during the 12 months leading up to February.
Lawal Ishaq, a local lawyer who documents secret killings against Muslims, recorded 36 deaths in March and April.
Death tolls are sensitive in Jos – and highly unreliable.
<span style="font-weight: bold">The figures for the March massacre, in which mostly Christians were killed, range from 150 to 450.</span>
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