Lagos - Three churches and several liquor shops have been burnt in Nigeria's northern city Kaduna and Muslims are suspected to be behind what seem to be arson attacks, newspapers reported on Sunday.
The churches were set ablaze in the suburb of Hayin-Banki on Saturday, said The Guardian and The Punch newspapers in their front page reports.
The district was adorned with the posters of Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden, linked with the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, said the newspapers.
Riot police and other security agents have swiftly been deployed to strategic parts of the city, prone to religious disturbances.
A witness told The Guardian that it was "the quick intervention of some Christian residents in the area who alerted security officers that saved the lives of about five people who were inside one of the churches".
A spokesperson for the state governor told journalists that the governor has already visited officials of one of the affected churches, the reports said.
The spokesperson, Zuberu Sirajo, said that the police were investigating the incident.
The secretary of the Christian Association of Nigeria for all the northern states, Saidu Dogo, told journalists that the fire at churches might be connected with last month's ethnic and religious violence in the central northern city of Jos in which at least 500 people were killed.
Dogo said that some Muslims in Kaduna had vowed to retaliate in the aftermath of the Jos crisis.
"I can assure you that that these people are bent on causing a crisis in the name of religion," Dogo was quoted as saying.
Hundreds of people died in July in ethnic-religious violence in northern Bauchi State and more than 2 000 people died in similar clashes in Kaduna last year.
A senior official from Nigeria's highest Islamic body on Saturday warned Nigerians against whipping up religious and ethnic tensions for political ends.
Nigerians should avoid "excessive and aggressive evangelisation and refrain from politicising religion", the secretary general of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, Lateef Adegbite, said on national television.
Sapa-AFP