Women in the Nigerian city of Jos. Violence rocked the area once again, leaving as many as 500 people, mostly women and children, dead in villages around the city. Photo Credit: Missbax/Flickr

More than 500 people died this weekend following a resurgence of the religious clashes that have long troubled the central Nigerian region around the city of Jos. According to the BBC, people armed with machetes attacked three mostly Christian villages near Jos, allegedly revenge for the January uprisings that resulted in the death of hundreds of Muslims and Christians. Many of the dead are women and children.

Facing criticism that the government is unable to quell the frequent outbreaks of violence in the country, Nigeria’s acting president, Goodluck Jonathan, ordered security forces to hunt down those responsible for the massacre. Al Jazeera reported today that dozens of people have already been arrested in connection with the attacks.

Yvonne Ndege, reporter for Al Jazeera, told the news agency, “This really is a test for [Jonathan’s] ability to show that he does have the powers to deploy the police and army as commander-in-chief, and many people will be watching exactly to see how he deals with this.”

Despite the number of police patrolling the streets now, the BBC World Service also reported today that the attacks went on for many hours on Sunday, without intervention by police – prompting many observers, including human rights organizations, to ask what happened.

Jos, which stands at the divide between the Muslim northern part of the country and the Christian south, has long been the site of religious violence and has been under a military curfew since clashes in January killed nearly 400 people. Caroline Duffield, BBC news reporter in Lagos, Nigeria, said many families left these villages during the last weeks as rumours of retaliation mounted, but it’s wrong to class the killings as religiously based. “These killings are often painted by local politicians as a religious or sectarian conflict,” she said. “In fact it is a struggle between ethnic groups for fertile land and resources in the region known as Nigeria’s Middle Belt.”

Others, however, say that the massacre was nothing more than “ethnic cleansing,” Al Jazeera reported.

In the wake of the January violence and with the uncertainty over Nigeria’s ill and absentee president, Umaru Yar’Adua, the international community saw in Nigeria a powder keg. Though Yar’Adua ceded power to Jonathan, solving temporarily the concern around Nigeria’s leadership, violent uprisings of the sort in the Jos region draws attention to the country’s inability to provide security for all of its citizens.