Thursday, 21 November, 2002, 21:23 GMT BBC
Twelve killed in Miss World riots

At least 12 people have been killed in the Nigerian city of Kanduna
after protests against next month's Miss World beauty competition
descended into bloody violence.
Shehu Sani, civil rights activist

Many more are also believed to have died, after thousands of Muslim
youths rampaged through the suburbs of the city, erecting barricades of
burning tyres, setting fire to buildings, and attacking churches.

The authorities in the northern city have declared a curfew with
immediate effect.

Protests started after the newspaper ThisDay published an article which
said that the Prophet Mohammed would probably have chosen to marry one
of the contestants if he had witnessed the beauty pageant, which Nigeria
is hosting next month.

Kaduna is one of Nigeria's most volatile cities, and has been largely
segregated into Christian and Muslim areas since clashes two years ago,
in which more than 2,000 people died.

Text message

On Wednesday hundreds of people chanting "Allahu Akbar" (God is great)
attacked the Kaduna office of the Lagos-based newspaper, which has
retracted the article and published two separate apologies.

Civil rights activist Shehu Sani told the French news agency, AFP that
the city had descended into "pandemonium" on Thursday, with the streets
littered with burning tyres.

"Schools and public offices are shut. Business is paralysed, everybody
is staying at home and the security forces are trying to avoid contact
with the demonstrators," he said.


The BBC's Yusuf Sarki Muhammad says that local mosques had been calling
for action against the paper and said that some people were first
alerted to the article by text messages being sent to their mobile
phones.

Death by stoning

The government has issued a statement, appealing for calm and assuring
Muslims that those responsible for the ThisDay article would be brought
to book, for exceeding "the bounds of responsible journalism."

Witnesses told Reuters news agency that the rioters have vowed to attack
ThisDay offices all over the north, where Sharia law has been
introduced.


The Miss World pageant is taking place over several weeks in Nigeria,
but only in the southern, largely Christian and Animist, part of the
country.

Muslim groups say the contest is un-Islamic and are also upset that it
began during the holy month of Ramadan.

The contest had also been threatened by a large-scale boycott by beauty
queens protesting against a Sharia court's sentence of death by stoning
against Amina Lawal, a woman convicted of adultery.

The Nigerian Government has moved to calm fears by promising it will not
allow any Nigerian to be stoned to death and about 90 Miss World
contestants have arrived in Nigeria, ahead of the final contest in the
capital, Abuja, on 7 December.

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