Dressed in black and carrying wooden crosses, thousands of women marched Thursday in Nigerian city of Jos to express grief at a new bout of sectarian carnage and anger at the failure to stop it.

The demonstration in the flashpoint capital city coincided with the start of a three-day fast ordered by the authorities in central Plateau state in a symbolic commitment to reconciliation between Muslims and Christians.

The women, some with babies strapped on their backs and others carrying pictures of the children slaughtered in last Sunday's raid blamed on mainly Muslim Fulani cattle herdsmen, called for justice and withdrawal of troops deployed at the peak of the January religious clashes.

Sunday's raid claimed 109 lives according to police, while the local information commissioner put the figure at 500.

Lost faith in the security services

With recriminations still flying around over the weekend massacre, locals said they would pray for an end to the bloodshed as they had lost faith in the security services.

Scene: 'Enough is enough' say Nigerian women

"We are mourning because of the children that were killed on Sunday, we are coming as a mass to cry out," said 32-year-old Rebecca Adiwu as she joined in the mass protest in central Jos.

Some carried Bibles and some held the branches of mango trees in a sign of solidarity.

"We do not want soldiers! No more soldiers!" the protesters chanted, waving their Bibles and crosses in the air.

Helen Laraba, a 26-year-old tailor who was among the women in black, also vented her anger at the military which has been accused of failing to respond to reports that gangs of machete-wielding Muslims had gone on the rampage.

Troop reinforcements are now patrolling the city and the surrounding villages but locals said it was too late.

"They said they would come and protect us, but they didn't do anything for us," said Laraba.

Major-General Salih Maina, in charge of military operations in the region came to his own defence, saying he had commanded troops which went to crush an uprising in Maiduguri last year where 700, mainly Muslims, were killed.

"The public should stop seeing members of the joint task force as enemies, either compromising or being partisan," he told reporters in Jos.

Women and children bore the brunt

Women and children bore the brunt of the three-hour killing spree in the early hours of Sunday morning.

It was the latest in a long chapter of sectarian violence and came as locals were still trying to come to terms with Muslim-Christian clashes in Jos in January which left several hundred dead.

Jonah Jang, the governor of Plateau, announced a three-day state-wide fast "to forgive our sins and bring peace" starting Thursday.

"I am already fasting," said 36-year-old accountant Michael Kwakfut. "It's for the healing of our land, because of (the) ... things that we have done."

But Ramadan Shehu, a Muslim was not fasting and said had not plans to do so.

"If we are to be fair, my brethren were killed and massacred in January, but the governor ... did not offer any word of consolation. I find it baffling, now he is calling for fasting and prayers, because his people have been attacked," he said.

'Cycle of violence' 

"Enough is enough, we are tired of this cycle of violence. All we are asking is that our children and women should not be killed anymore. We demand justice," a Christian pastor, Esther Ebanga, told the protesters.

Police have arrested 49 Fulani herdsmen for the killings and said they had confessed to having acted in revenge for attacks in January which left more than 300 mainly Muslims dead.

However a Fulani community leader in Jos said the arrests were the "grossest injustice".

"We call on the federal government to halt the indiscriminate arrest of herdsmen in Plateau State, especially in Mangu and Jos East local government areas from where almost all the cattle rearers were arrested," said Sale Bayari, a member of the presidential committee set up following the earlier killings in Jos.

The latest attacks also caused about 8,000 people to flee their homes, according to the Red Cross.

-AFP