11 Die as Nigerian Rioters Protest Rule

LAGOS, NIGERIA, JULY 6 -- Rioters fought police and soldiers today and at least 11 people were reported killed, as tens of thousands of people set fires and blocked roads in Nigeria's largest city to demand an end to military dictatorship.

It was the first report of deaths since Lagos residents began demonstrating Monday to press the government to recognize the results of a presidential election held June 12 and annulled the following week. The vote was to have ended a decade of military rule.

The Pan-African News Agency said soldiers killed several rioters who set a truck on fire in Ikoyi, a well-to-do Lagos neighborhood. The agency, set up by the Organization of African Unity, quoted witnesses as saying that the troops piled bodies in the back of a truck and drove away. Other witnesses said five people died.

In other incidents, witnesses and journalists said a mob burned a taxi driver to death after he tried to crash through a human chain and killed a youth, police fatally shot a man as people looted a supermarket, a soldier shot a man to death at a blocked bridge, and police killed a man in a stone-throwing crowd.

At least one policeman was clubbed to death, witnesses said. In addition, a police sergeant beaten by protesters Monday died today.

Crowds of demonstrators gathered at bus terminals chanting, "The military is dead!" Other protesters built barricades of buses, cars and tires and set them on fire to block all bridges leading from Lagos's three main residential islands to the commercial district on the mainland.

All major markets, shops, banks and businesses were closed and shuttered, but looters broke into dozens of stores for a second day. People hurried through streets carrying televisions on their heads, balancing refrigerators and cookers on wheelbarrows and pushing supermarket carts filled with food.

Most of the barricades were manned by youths armed with rocks and clubs who stopped every moving vehicle and robbed the occupants.

Highway overpasses were jammed with thousands of people who hurled rocks at police vehicles. Police responded with tear gas and fired shots over the crowds' heads but appeared to be trying to avoid confrontation.

The federal government ordered state authorities in Lagos to bring the situation under control within 24 hours, government-controlled Nigerian Radio reported. It also said that the army was ordered to assist police.

The protests were the most serious since June 16, when Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, the country's military ruler, abruptly voided results of the presidential election. There was sporadic violence last week, most of it in the south. Many southerners contend the election was voided because the apparent leading vote-getter, Moshood Abiola, although a Muslim himself, would have been Nigeria's first president from the predominantly Christian south. Northern Muslim groups have dominated Nigerian politics for three decades.

Babangida met with leaders of the country's two political parties late Monday, but they were unable to agree on how to resolve the crisis in this nation of 88.5 million, Africa's most populous country.

Abiola said today that Babangida gave them an ultimatum that they must accept new elections on July 31 or he would dissolve all the democratic institutions set up last year, including the popularly elected Senate and National Assembly, and replace them with an interim administration to organize new elections.

Nduka Irabor, a spokesman for the government, said the idea was just an option Babangida put to the politicians. Critics, however, said it was another ploy in what they consider a series of maneuvers by Babangida to hold on to power. He has scrapped timetables for a return to civilian rule several times in recent years.

Although Babangida's government orchestrated last month's election -- organizing the two parties that chose the candidates and writing the party platforms -- the general claimed the election had been tainted by vote-buying and barred the nominees from running July 31.