KADUNA, Nigeria - Idris Ibrahim tried to outrun the angry mob, but they nearly severed his left hand with machetes before leaving him for dead in a northern Nigerian town where postelection violence has erupted this week.
A Christian hid Ibrahim, a Muslim, inside a car and brought him to a hospital in Kaduna, where overwhelmed staff had to use cardboard boxes Wednesday to make splints for the wounded.
More than 200 people have been brought to St. Gerard's Hospital, including a preschool-aged girl whose chin was bandaged. Authorities have been fearful of releasing casualty figures for fear of inciting more violence, but at least 70 deaths had been reported across the north, including 20 who died at this hospital.
In its morgue lay the bodies of victims shot, burned and in one case disemboweled in rioting that swept Kaduna in the aftermath of Saturday's presidential vote.
On Wednesday, about 200 suspected rioters appeared in court in Kaduna to hear the charges against them. A local magistrate accused the men of committing armed robbery, rioting, rape and murder during the violence that gripped the northern state. He remanded them to prison for two months' time. None of the suspects had a lawyer in court.
Muslim rioters burned homes, churches and police stations after results showed Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian, had beaten his closest Muslim opponent. Reprisal attacks by Christians began almost immediately, with one mob allegedly tearing a home apart to look for a Qur'an to prove the occupants were Muslims before setting the building ablaze.
In an interview with CNN, Jonathan said Wednesday that the postelection violence "was not a spontaneous reaction."
"I don't want to accuse anybody but we believe that people must be behind this," Jonathan said.
Muslim presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari has called the violence "sad, unfortunate and totally unwarranted" and urged his supporters to refrain from attacks.
"It is wrong for you to allow miscreants to infiltrate your ranks and perpetrate such dastardly acts as the mindless destruction of worship places," Buhari said Wednesday. "Needless to say, this act is worse than the rigging of the elections."
Mobs have engineered two prison breaks, burned down the home of one powerful traditional ruler and attempted to destroy the home of Nigeria's vice-president. The region remained tense Wednesday and in the northeastern state of Gombe, local radio stations have suspended programming to run recordings of religious and community leaders calling on young people to be peaceful.
Nigeria has a long history of violent and rigged polls since it abandoned military rule and embraced democracy 12 years ago. However, observers largely said Saturday's presidential election appeared to be fair, and the U.S. State Department said it was a significant improvement over the last poll in 2007.
The nation of 150 million people is divided between the Christian-dominated south and the Muslim north. A dozen states across Nigeria's north have Islamic Shariah law in place, though the area remains under the control of secular state governments.
Thousands have been killed in religious violence in the past decade. In Kaduna alone, more than 2,000 died as the government moved to enact Islamic Shariah law in 2000. In 2002, rioting over a newspaper article suggesting the prophet Muhammad would have married a Miss World pageant contestant killed dozens here. The roots of the sectarian conflict across the north often have more to do with struggles for political and economic dominance.
Many northerners wanted the country's ruling party to nominate a Muslim candidate this year because Jonathan had only taken power because the Muslim elected leader died before finishing his term. However, Jonathan prevailed in the ruling party's primary and became its candidate for president.
The violence in the north has all but halted bus service to the region. Okereke Matthew, a ticket seller for First Tarzan Motors in Lagos, said his company was not going to the northern cities of Kaduna and Kano.
"The crisis is affecting our business. The buses we have in Kano haven't come back. Nobody is travelling to Kano," he said.
