Protests Over Beauty Pageant Kill 50 in Nigeria
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) -- Rioters stabbed and set fire to bystanders today in violence that erupted after a newspaper suggested that Muhammad, Islam's founding prophet, would have approved of the Miss World beauty pageant. At least 50 people were killed and 200 injured.

The violent demonstrators in the northern city of Kaduna burned churches and rampaged through the streets until hundreds of soldiers were deployed to restore calm and enforce a dusk-to-dawn curfew.

"A lot of people died. We don't know yet exactly how many . . . more than 50," said Emmanuel Ijewere, the president of the Nigerian Red Cross.

Street demonstrations began Wednesday with the burning of an office of ThisDay newspaper in Kaduna after it published an article questioning Muslim groups that have condemned the Miss World pageant, scheduled to be held Dec. 7 in the Nigerian capital, Abuja.

Muslim groups say the pageant promotes sexual promiscuity and indecency.

"What would Muhammad think? In all honesty, he would probably have chosen a wife from among them [the contestants]," Isioma Daniel wrote in Saturday's article.

The newspaper ran a brief front-page apology Monday, followed by a more lengthy retraction today, saying the offending passage had run by mistake.

In the rioting today, more than 50 people were stabbed, bludgeoned or burned to death and 200 were seriously injured, Ijewere said.

At least four churches were destroyed, he said.

Shehu Sani of the Kaduna-based Civil Rights Congress said he watched a crowd stab one young man, then force a tire filled with gasoline around his neck and burn him alive. Sani said he saw three other bodies elsewhere in the city.

Alsa Hassan, founder of another human rights group, Alsa Care, said he saw a man dragged out of his car and beaten to death by protesters.

Schools and shops hurriedly closed as hordes of young men, shouting "Allahu Akhbar," or "God is great," ignited makeshift street barricades made of tires and garbage, sending plumes of black smoke rising above the city. Others were heard chanting, "Down with beauty" and "Miss World is sin."

Hundreds of police and soldiers were deployed to restore calm. Riding in pickup trucks, they fired tear gas at protesters marching through otherwise abandoned streets waving tree branches and palm fronds.

Islamic fundamentalist groups for several months have warned of protests against the Miss World pageant, prompting organizers to postpone the finale until after the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

Contestants from five countries -- Costa Rica, Denmark, Switzerland, South Africa and Panama -- are boycotting the event because Islamic courts in Nigeria have sentenced several unmarried women to death by stoning for conceiving babies outside wedlock.