JOS, Nigeria (AP) -- American missionaries helped Nigerian Muslims sweep up market stalls destroyed by a Christian mob on a righteous rampage. A few blocks away, a 16-year-old Christian girl returned home after being saved from a killer Muslim gang by a stranger. Her savior? A Muslim.
Throughout this stunningly beautiful plateau city on Monday, accounts of human compassion cut across the grain of a three-day cycle of Muslim-Christian violence that left dozens, at least -- hundreds, more likely -- dead.
"If Christians can do this to others," said missionary Craig Ewoldt, pointing to Muslim-owned tourist stalls destroyed in the fighting, "then obviously we all have a long road to travel."
"There were so many bodies," said Muhuyiddeen Jibrin, a Muslim stall owner, who said he watched six people -- one, his neighbor -- gunned down in a single exchange between Christians and Muslims. "I don't know how I'll ever sleep."
Jos, a predominantly Christian city of 4 million with a large Muslim minority, has long been a base for foreign Christian missions owing to its climate, its beauty and -- until now -- its serenity.
That all shattered Friday night, when what had been growing Muslim-Christian tensions exploded over what some said was a simple bit of rudeness -- a Christian woman who tried to cross a street in front of a mosque where Muslim men were gathered in prayer.
Introduction of Sharia, or Islamic law, in several northern states more than a year ago heightened discord between the two groups in Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, with 120 million people. Since then, northern Nigerian communities have repeatedly exploded into violence, killing hundreds at a time.
But never in Jos, until now. Monday, as deployment of the army and police helped restore order, the mosque where the conflict was said to have started lay in charred ruins. So did scores of other mosques, and Christian churches, with pages of Sunday-school books strewn about.
Nigerian police at first refused to give a death toll for fear of heightening tensions, then released a preliminary figure Monday -- 51.
Witness accounts and bodies still sprawled in the streets despite days of retrieval by soldiers indicated the true figure was likely far higher. The Associated Press saw 12 bodies Monday, one lying in a river.
Troops blocked journalists and distraught families from hospital morgues. Soldiers confiscated the camera of a news photographer who asked to enter.
Meanwhile, a former military leader, Yakubu Gowon, was mediating talks Monday between Muslim and Christian groups. Religious leaders appealed on state radio for an end to the fighting.
Religious unrest, meanwhile, also broke out Monday in another northern city, Kano, some 150 miles away where a Muslim mob burned a church and cars. Police said the incident was not linked to the Jos uprising.
In Jos, intermittent gunfire still crackled and a few plumes of smoke rose into the air.
Tensions stayed high. Outside the city's largest mosque, Massalachi Juma, soldiers fired shots in the air to ward off crowds of young Muslim men who gathered and then went away, only to gather again.
While the devastation throughout this city was enormous -- with thousands of cars and homes and dozens of places of worship destroyed -- the carnage was far from universal.
Residents recounted stories Monday of Muslims and Christians saving one another from death or risking their own lives to rush wounded to hospitals and pull corpses of friends and strangers alike off streets during the fighting.
Jibrin's stepbrother, Gazali Shuaibu, a Muslim, said he rescued a frightened 16-year-old Christian, Ehuna Nyitsse, when he pulled her into his house Friday evening to help her escape a Muslim mob.
He and his family hid the teen-ager for 48 hours, jeopardizing their own safety. She sneaked home during a lull in the violence.
"I never met her before that, but I saved her because maybe one day maybe something will happen to me and I will need help from her," said Shuaibu.
Ewoldt, a Saline, Mich., native working for a Chicago-based Bible distribution network, was among 10 American missionaries and their teen-age children pitching in with brooms and garbage bags to help Muslim shopkeepers at Jos' main marketplace.
Still, for Beaj Beacham, a teacher at Jos' interdenominational American Christian school, known as Hillcrest, the city would never be the same. Beacham, originally from Laceyville, Pa., has lived in Nigeria with her husband for more than 20 years.
"This never happened before, and we think now that it could happen again," Beacham said, predicting the same cycle of violence for shocked Jos that has taken hold in other northern Nigerian communities.
"Someday there will be a blood bath -- retaliation."