Saturday October 13, 2001

KANO, Nigeria (Reuters) - At least 20 people were killed in Nigeria in anti-American riots Saturday. Nigerian authorities issued a shoot-on-sight order and clamped a night curfew on Kano, the biggest city in the mainly Muslim north, after some of the most violent anti-American protests in Africa since U.S. air strikes on Afghanistan began.

Army tanks criss-crossed the streets to quell riots which followed a pattern of Muslim-Christian clashes that have killed thousands in oil-producing Nigeria over the past two years. ``There is rampant shooting in the streets,'' said resident Jibrin Idris, who said he was trapped in a building with scores of people in the city's commercial district. ``Churches, mosques and shops are on fire. There is smoke everywhere,'' he said by telephone.

In Nigeria, the army moved tanks into Kano's Sabon Gari market area early Saturday after Christian churches and mosques were set on fire in rioting Friday. Community leaders said rioters killed at least six female school students on their way to take university entrance exams. Police said they found another two bodies in the street, one hacked by a machete, and a witness said he was seeking refuge in a police station when eight more bodies were brought in. Up to four people were shot later by soldiers enforcing the shoot on sight measure, witnesses said. Mike Idika, a leader of the predominantly Christian Igbo community, which accounts for most of city's merchants, said more than 200 people had been injured and sent to hospital.

Local residents said the protests were lead by unemployed youth, who chanted ``May God destroy America!'' and ``Americans are terrorists.'' Brandishing posters of bin Laden, they burned American flags and effigies of President Bush and Nigerian Foreign Minister Sule Lamido, who has backed the U.S. attacks