According to Iranian media, during his conversation with Mr Buhari, President Rouhani inquired about the fate of Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky, the IMN leader arrested after troops besieged his home in the northern city of Zaria.
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Representatives of a Shia Muslim sect in northwestern Nigeria said on Tuesday that hundreds of its members were killed by the military in a massacre over the weekend. We ask for the army to stop molestation of our members; all corpses of our brothers and sisters killed by the army should be released for proper Islamic burial.
“They started throwing unsafe missiles, stones, machete and all kinds of traditional or crude weapons”, Gen. Oyebade said of the sect’s members, adding that security forces concluded that Gen. Buratai’s life “was under threat, and they had no other option than to force their way through the blockage, including the use of lethal weapons”. It is not the first time the army has clashed with the Shiite group as three sons of the group’s leader were killed by soldiers in bloody protests past year. Still, the Nigerian military has a long and bad history of human rights abuses, including killing civilians, during its campaigns against insurgent groups.
While traveling in Zaria, Kaduna state, members of theIslamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) attacked the convoy of Chief of Army Staff Tukur Buratai on Saturday.
Mr Musa also claimed that soldiers had now removed about 200 bodies from the sect’s headquarters in Zaria, where a poster of Ayatollah Khomeini hangs in Mr Zakzaky’s offices. The exact toll could not be determined, however, as the Nigerian military took all the bodies with them when they left.
The United States Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. James Entwistle, yesterday described the clashes between the Army and the Shiite Muslim group in Zaria, Kaduna State, as unfortunate. Spokesmen also insist that 1,000 members of the group were killed in the altercation, and that the Nigerian government is working to cover that number up.
Iran condemned the killings and summoned the Nigerian envoy.
This was sequel to the complaints received from the Nigerian Army and concerned citizens on the incident which led to the loss of life and damage to property. The strongest response so far has come from pro-Shia Iran where protests have been held outside the Nigerian embassy in Tehran and there have also been protests in Muslim students in India.
In a report defending its actions, the army said that some 500 of Mr Zakzaky’s followers had been seen crawling through fields of dense brush with the intent of attacking General Turakai’s convoy with petrol bombs. Iran state TV said Rouhani told Buhari Tuesday that he expects the Nigerian government to compensate families of victims. Boko Haram often attacks Muslims who oppose its radical vision of Islam. Still, Boko Haram re-emerged as a much more violent entity.
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More recently, Shiite followers of Zakzaky were targeted in a suicide bombing that killed at least 21 people during a procession from Kano to Zaria.
