A mosque and Islamic school have been attacked and set alight in the southern Nigerian city of Benin, police say.

Police told the BBC that one person was killed, 10 arrested and that part of the mosque was still burning.

It follows a separate attack on a different mosque in the city on Monday.

In recent weeks, southerners, who are mostly Christians or animists, have been the targets of deadly attacks by the Islamist Boko Haram group, which operates in the mainly Muslim north.

The attack is the latest in a spiral of sectarian violence that has seen many southerners living in the north flee their homes.

Nigerian writer and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka blamed the violence on leaders who put their own religion above national unity.

“When you get a situation where a bunch of people can go to a place of worship and open fire through the windows you’ve reached a certain dismal watershed in the life of that nation,” he said in a BBC interview.

“There’s no question at all, whatsoever. Those who have created this faceless army have lost control of that army.”   »»» BBC News

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