WIRE:05/25/2000 15:16:00 ET Troops protect Nigeria Kaduna refinery from riot ABUJA, May 25 (Reuters) - State-run Nigerian National Petroleum Corp said on Thursday that troops had been deployed to protect workers at its northern Kaduna refinery from religious clashes ravaging the city. "Soldiers have been deployed to Kaduna refinery to protect staff working there," NNPC Group Managing Director Jackson Gaius-Obaseki told Reuters in the Nigerian capital Abuja.

The 110,000-barrels-per-day refinery is currently working at about 50 percent of capacity serving most parts of northern Nigeria, according to the NNPC.

There had been heavy military cover for other oil installations in Kaduna, Jackson said.

Renewed violence broke out on Tuesday between Moslems and Christians in Kaduna suburbs, triggered by the discovery of the body of a Christian in the southern suburb of Nariyi. Fighting erupted in Narii and neighbouring Barnawa and quickly spread to other outlying districts.

Hospital sources said the death toll was well over 200. Police confirmed 43 deaths. Nigerian newspapers reported on Thursday that dozens of the victims had been buried in a mass grave.

President Olusegun Obasanjo's government, which marks the end of military rule and its first year in office on May 29, has been dogged by ethnic and religious violence that has killed more than 1,000 people in the one-year period.

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/reuters20000525_2968.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), May 25, 2000