Troops return uneasy calm to Africa's largest city
Security forces have restored an uneasy calm to Lagos after three days of ethnic rioting that left at least 100 people dead and sent thousands fleeing.
Residents in two districts, where fighting between the Yoruba and Hausa tribes began, were ordered to walk through the streets with their hands above their head as a precaution.
Some people were ordered to lie on the ground while soldiers searched them for weapons.
Residents were still fleeing the area, saying they were afraid the security forces would soon leave despite widespread fears of a resurgence of fighting after nightfall. Others, however, were nervously venturing back to collect whatever belongings were left in their looted, burned homes.
Hundreds of people - mostly Hausa women, children and elderly men - had sought refuge at army barracks and a police college, further away.
The ethnic Yoruba governor of Nigeria's Lagos state appeared on national television alongside Hausa governors of several northern states to appeal to fighters in their respective languages to lay down their weapons.
"We are one nation, one people, one God," Governor Bola Tinubu said.
There are long-standing hostilities between the mainly Muslim Hausa and the Yoruba, most of whom are Christians and animists. The Hausa dominate Nigeria's north, while the Yoruba are the main tribe in the southwest.
Red Cross officials said they had counted more than 100 bodies and 450 people had been admitted to hospitals with gun, machete and other serious injuries.
