Attackers kill 16, burn houses of the city of Northern Nigeria

BAUCHI, Nigeria - the attackers killed at least 16 people and set fire to more than a dozen houses in a town in Northern Nigeria has been beset by years of sectarian violence, police said late Friday.

Residents, said that the attack on the town of Tafawa articulated in Bauchi State appears to have been an act of retaliation for the earlier murders, in the region while the police said that the authors had not yet be identified.

"Sixteen people were confirmed killed by unknown assailants," Bauchi police Commissioner, said John Aba Kasanga.

Bauchi neighbors of Nigeria "Middle Belt," a region Plateau State where the predominantly Muslim North meeting the predominantly Christian South and where communities of different ethnic and religious backgrounds are seated side by side.

The tension is rooted in decades of resentment among Aboriginal groups, mainly Christian or animist, are vying for control of fertile agricultural land and to political and economic with migrants and settlers in the Muslim north.

There were frequent clashes between crowds of Christians and Muslims, in the villages around Jos the capital of the State of Plateau, and Bauchi. Hundreds of people were killed in violence around Jos in the first months of the year.

At least 500 people were killed last month in protests and the murders of reprisals after President Goodluck Jonathan, a Southern Christian, was declared winner of the presidential election, defeating the leader of the former North Muhammadu Buhari Muslim army.

There were demonstrations in cities across the North, but the worst violence was in the southern part of Kaduna State, Plateau of neighbours, sharing diverse ethnic and religious in the rest of the middle belt.

Jonathan, who had broad support in the South, but also earned millions of votes, in the North promised "all included" Government to try to heal the breaches.

Congress of the Buhari for change party progressive (CPC) said that there was evidence that electoral commission computers have been rigged and that the vote count was manipulated in Jonathan favor. He promised to challenge the outcome in court.

Friday, the Group has asked a court to compel the electoral commission to preserve all the data and the ballot box capture machines used in the polls for forensic examination and to enable access to the voter new biometric register so he could cross check thumb on the ballots.