“We have reports that bodies of our members killed outside the house of our leader are being evacuated in trucks by soldiers”, Ibrahim Musa, an IMN spokesperson, told Agence France-Presse. Army spokesman Col. Sani Usman didn’t instantly reply to an email late Wednesday. requesting remark on the burial charges.
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AMNESTY International has demanded an investigation into allegations that the Nigerian army killed hundreds of people during a weekend raid on a mostly Shi’ite Muslim organisation.
Numerous same sources claim that the army attacked a Shia procession that was blocking the movement of the Chief of Army Staff Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai’s motorcade; the military is claiming that the Shia threatened the motorcade and attacked a police station.
“The sect numbering hundreds carrying unsafe weapons, barricaded the roads with bonfires, heavy stones and tyres”, an army statement said. Still, the Nigerian military has a long and awful history of human rights abuses, including killing civilians, during its campaigns against insurgent groups. Authorities reportedly took Zakzaky and his wife into custody, while some reports indicated his son died in the attack, according to the BBC. Odinkalu was quoting the family doctor.
Odinkalu and other human rights activists said there are hundreds of bodies at the mortuary of the Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital on the outskirts of Zaria.
Speaker Ali Larijani said that the parliament is now preparing a response “to the killings of Nigeria’s Shiite Muslims”.
“The military in the African nation has killed innocents and are oppressing common people in the country”, a protester said.
Rouhani called President Muhammadu Buhari to say that “minor disputes must not be allowed to turn into deep differences” among Muslims, the reports said.
The Director of First Bureau of Africa at the Foreign Ministry in Tehran condemned the attack, describing it as unacceptable and underlined the responsibility of the Nigerian government to protect Shiite Muslims, especially the leader of the movement, Sheikh Ibrahim El-Zakzaky. The Sunni extremist group Boko Haram began seriously escalating its militant activities in 2009 as a result of clashes with the Nigerian military. Nigerian troops are accused of killing thousands of detainees by shooting, torture, starvation and suffocation in its prosecution of a war against Boko Haram in northeastern Nigeria.
On yesterday’s incident, the sect issued a statement, saying: “The mobile police unit (MOPOL) attacked a peaceful protest staged by the members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria in Kaduna, killing three people on the spot, with many receiving gunshot injuries”.
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Some 15 members of the Shiite sect were killed in 2014 by a suicide bomber at a festival in Potiskum, Yobe state. The group then re-emerged stronger and more violent in 2011. If you would like to discuss another topic, look for a relevant article.
