Jos riots have left 40,000 people displaced. Photo credit: Mike Blyth

Last week’s religious violence in the northern Nigerian city of Jos has left least 40,000 people homeless, Nigerian newspaper This Day reported today. Police figures place the total death toll at 326, Al Jazeera reported, but medical workers and religious figures place it much higher, at more than 550.

The Nigerian National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said it has moved in relief materials to the roughly 18 camps displaced residents have built around the city. The state government has also relaxed the 24-hour curfew curfew in Jos to 12 hours, from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., the AFP reported yesterday.

While many Nigerian senators commended the Plateau State Police for arresting nearly 300 people, a state government spokesman told reporters that the culprits are rarely prosecuted and often released soon after arrest, reported French daily, Afrik. Government officials fear that those arrested may return to Jos to incite more violence.

However, exactly who is to blame for the violence remains to unclear: Al Jazeera reported today while both Christians and Muslims agree that the violence was sparked by a dispute over the rebuilding of a house that had been destroyed during the 2008 religious riots, neither can agree on who struck the first blow. A group of Muslims burying some of the victims of the clashes told Al Jazeera that the riots started after a Muslim boy was beaten up by Christian youths. Christians, however, told the news agency that the violence began after a group of Muslims attacked a Christian woman.

Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama, head of the Roman Catholic Church in Jos, condemned both Christians and Muslims, AFP reported and said that these killings were “worse” than the Christmas bomb attack attempt by a Nigerian. “We made so much noise and protested when the United States placed Nigeria on a terrorist watchlist following the failed bomb attack. Is what happened in Jos in the last few days not worse than that attack?” Kaigama asked.

According to Reuters, more than 13,500 deaths have been attributed to sectarian violence in Nigeria in the past decade.