Nigeria clashes leave 70 dead

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Soldiers patrol the Zango area of Bauchi in northern Nigeria. — AFP

BAUCHI, Nigeria, 30 (AFP): At least 70 people died in violent clashes between security forces and Islamists in the northern Nigeria city of Bauchi, according to a hospital morgue body count Wednesday.
The clashes erupted Monday between suspected members of an Islamist sect and policy and military forces.
The reporter who visited the morgue counted 42 bodies on the floor of the morgue, all with bullet or machete wounds. Another 25 bodies, mostly young people including many minors, had been placed in cold storage rooms at the morgue.
Three members of the security forces were also killed in the unrest Monday.
"With the heat, these bodies need to be buried quickly as they will decompose rapidly," an employee told the reporter at the morgue, where the room was being cooled by a single fan.
The radical Islamic sect Kala-Kato, also known by the name of Maitatsine, has been present in several states in northern Nigeria for decades.
Insurrections by its members in 1980 in the northern city of Kano and in 1992, capital of Adamawa state, also in the north, left thousands of people dead on each occasion.