Christian woman there, amid signs of new religious and ethnic clashes in the populous African nation. In separate incidents at least 30 people were killed in a week of fighting between farming communities and nomadic cattle herdsmen in Adamawa state, near the eastern frontier with Cameroon, reported the U.N.-run Integrated Regional Information Networks, quoting local officials and residents.
The Christian news agency, Compass Direct, said Christian Judith Lan’guti, whose age was not revealed, was shot dead without provocation on January 28 by soldiers who had been deployed to keep peace in the town of Numan, after previous violence between Muslims and Christians.
There were no immediate reactions from Nigerian government officials to the alleged incident. However one general was quoted as saying there was "a likelihood" of new religious turmoil in Numan.
"The present wind [religious crisis] that is blowing in Numan does no one any good," Major General John Ahmadu, reportedly told journalists last week.
EVANGELIST KILLED
The murder came 19 months after the killing of Rev. Esther Jinkai Ethan, a Christian evangelist, by "a Muslim fanatic", said Mahula Tika, a Christian community leader in Numan, in an interview with Compass Direct, which has close contacts with persecuted Christians.
"Up to this moment, the fanatic has not been prosecuted and now we are being forced to mourn the death of another Christian woman," he was quoted as saying.
Two major clashes reportedly occurred in the town in May 2003 and in May last year in which hundreds of people were believed to have been killed, Compass Direct said.
More violence apparently broke out in the town after Muslims built a mosque beside a cathedral of the Lutheran church and adjacent to the palace of the town’s Christian monarch,
Feddy Soditi Bongo.
FAMILY CONCERNED
Meanwhile in the city of Kano, the family of another Christian, 27-year old Yusuf Olawale, fears he may have been killed, Compass Direct said. Family members reportedly did not hear from him since his arrest by Islamic law enforcers on May 13 last year, on allegations that he had breached sharia, the Islamic legal code.
There are fears he may have been killed last year following riots in Kano, in which scores of Christians were killed and injured, reported Compass Direct. Kano State Commissioner for Justice Alhaji Aliyu Usman, a Muslim, refused to discuss the case, the news agency said.
These latest developments were expected to add to concern among Christian leaders in northern Nigeria, who say a government report on Islamic violence against Christians in Kano state "grossly underreports" the number of Christians killed.
The government reportedly said that 84 people died in religious violence in Kano in 2004, but representatives of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), have said close to 3,000 Christians died.
The United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) estimates that 40 percent of Nigeria’s over 137 million people are Christian, 50 percent Muslim and 10 percent of indigenous beliefs.
(With BosNewsLife News Center and Compass Direct).
