JOS (Nigeria) - THE Nigerian army took over the stricken city of Jos on Sunday to enforce calm after two days of Muslim-Christian clashes that left hundreds dead.

'The situation this morning is gradually returning to normal. There have not been any cases this morning of any destruction or violence,' Brigadier Emeka Onwamaegbu told AFP.

Mosque half field hospital, half mortuary JOS (Nigeria) - STRICKEN men and women lay on mattresses on the floor of the central mosque in Jos on Sunday, testament to two days of Muslim-Christian clashes that have left hundreds dead in this Nigerian city. As the army patrolled the streets outside - deserted because of a dusk-to-dawn curfew - nurses from the Nigerian Red Cross were making do with scarce and improvised equipment to treat roughly two dozen people, some suffering from gunshot wounds. ... more

Residents reported troops patrolling the streets and calm returning to the city. Offering the first official toll, Plateau State's information minister Nuhu Gagara said about 200 people died during fighting on Friday and Saturday between the rival communities over the results of a local election in the state capital.

Other sources have given a toll twice the official figure.

'This figure is just preliminary, as a search and rescue committee has been inaugurated by the government to go around the city and recover dead bodies,' Mr Gagara told reporters. He did not give a figure for the injured.

Police arrested 500 people on Saturday alone, carrying 'all sorts of lethal weapons', Mr Gargara said.

A Plateau State government spokesman was quoted in newspapers as saying that 1,500 youths had been arrested over the two days in connection with the violence.

Jos was under tight police and army surveillance Sunday, military spokesman Onwamaegbu said, while declining to say how many troops had been deployed in the city.

'There have been no reports of violence this morning, the army has taken over the capital but the only fear is what might happen at the outskirts of the town,' Muslim cleric Adamu Tsoho told AFP.

Relief workers and observers offered markedly higher death tolls than the government's preliminary estimates.

'Well over 300 people have been killed in the last two days of violence,' one Nigerian Red Cross official told AFP, asking to remain anonymous.

Mr Khaled Abubakar, an imam from the central mosque in Jos said on Saturday that 'close on 400 bodies' had been laid out in the mosque.

'Muslim prayers were observed on 351 dead bodies at the central mosque and then taken to the cemetery where they are being buried,' Mr Tsoho, the other cleric, said.

Another 30 bodies had been removed from the mosque on Saturday night by relatives and had been buried.

Earlier that day a local journalist said he counted 381 bodies in the mosque.

The Nigerian Red Cross reported as early as Friday night that 300 people had been injured and that more than 10,000 people were forced to flee their homes, seeking refuge in churches, mosques and army and police barracks.

The clashes were triggered by a rumour on Friday that the majority-Muslim All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP) had lost in a local election to the mainly Christian Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), according to a police spokesman.

Witnesses gave graphic accounts of the mayhem and violence.

'In some areas, people were coming shouting because of what was going on.

People were running for their lives,' said Mr Mohammed Sani, a religious official.

'I saw one case where a policeman shot somebody to death. The police were taking some people away, the man was enquiring where they were taken, and the policeman turned around and shot him.

'He was not carrying a weapon,' Mr Sani added, visibly shocked.

State governor Jonah Jang imposed a 24-hour curfew in four districts and ordered police to fire on anyone who broke it.

Muslims and Christians for the most part cohabit peacefully in Nigeria.

But Jos, lying in the country's 'middle belt' between the predominantly Muslim north and the mainly Christian south, already witnessed violent clashes between the two religious groups in 2001 when hundreds of people were also killed.

Another town in the same state, Yelwa, was hit by similar violence in 2004.

Hundreds of people also died in religious-based clashes in north-central Kaduna state when it tried to impose Sharia law in 2000. -- AFP