A tank rumbled through the troubled Nigerian city of Jos yesterday as soldiers escorted a truck loaded with bodies to a mass grave after four days of inter-religious clashes left some 300 dead.

NONE With a permanent curfew relaxed for a few hours, religious leaders conducted mass funerals after the government ordered in troops to quell attacks by rampaging gun and machete-wielding gangs that had raged since Sunday.

One after another, 98 bodies shrouded in white were laid in rows and on top of each other in a 120-square-metre (1,300 square foot) grave at the city's Narukuta cemetery.

The city's chief imam, Balarabe Dawud, appealed to Muslims not to avenge the killings.

"I appeal to all Muslims in Plateau to remain calm and law-abiding... our Muslim brethren in all parts of the country to refrain from any reprisal attacks," he said.

NONE Many of the shrouds were blood-stained, testimony to the shocking violence of the slaughter that began Sunday, reportedly sparked by a Muslim-Christian land dispute.

Many were hacked to death with machetes, others simply shot, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

"Impunity is the fuel that has been the fire of senseless killings burning in Jos," Dawud said in a eulogy delivered in the local Hausa dialect.

Dawud spoke as security was reportedly being stepped up in selected states in the predominantly Muslim north, where violence linked to Islamist sects has killed hundreds over the past year alone.

Speedy justice vowed

Vice President Goodluck Jonathan pledged that all those responsible for the killings would be arrested.

"The federal government is determined to secure convictions of the perpetrators of this crime, no matter how highly placed," he said in his first broadcast to the nation since he has began filling in for President Umaru Yar'Adua.

Yar'Adua has been hospitalised in Jeddah for a heart ailment since November 23.

"Those found to have engineered, encouraged or fanned the embers of this crisis, through their actions or pronouncements, will be arrested and speedily brought to justice," Jonathan said.

NONE Leaders of both faiths claim the fighting had little to do with religion and was an expression of the failure of the political leadership to address ethnic differences.

Christian leaders have blamed Nigerian troops for the killings in Jos, which straddles the rough dividing line between Nigeria's Muslim-dominated north and the largely-Christian south.

The Senate said it would investigate reports that some of those arrested were wearing military uniform.

"We are sad to announce that the real culprits that have been killing our Christian brethren are Nigerian soldiers," said the Plateau State Christian Elders Forum in a statement.

The top Muslim body in Nigeria, the Jamaatul Nasril Islam (JNI), said it was "highly disturbed with the repeated act of mass killing of innocent people and destruction of property by hoodlums in Jos."

Overflowing hospitals

Figures provided by Christian and Muslim leaders and paramedics pointed to a death toll of around 300, with hundreds more wounded being treated in overflowing hospitals and clinics.

The Red Cross said 18,000 people had been forced to flee, many of them taking refuge in military barracks, churches and mosques around the city.

Thousands of troops patrolled the streets on Thursday, manning checkpoints and stopping and searching vehicles.

NONE Residents said unrest eased the night before, and authorities relaxed a permanent curfew, allowing people to leave their homes to replenish depleted stocks of food and water, after the curfew halted supplies to the city of some 500,000.

"The situation is calm," said David Maiyaki, a resident of Nassarawa Gwom, a predominantly Christian area where the clashes first erupted on Sunday.

Plateau police commissioner Gregory Anting said: "Normalcy has returned." "There hasn't been any report of violence since morning and those who fled at the wake of the crisis are gradually returning home."

But life was slow in picking up as most of the shops, markets, banks and the airport remained shut.

Jos has been a hotbed of religious violence in Nigeria, whose 150 million people are divided almost equally between followers of the two faiths.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon has expressed alarm over the clashes and appealed to all sides for restraint.

- AFP