More than 160 people have been arrested in connection with the massacre earlier this month of scores of people in central Nigeria, a national police spokesman told CNN Monday.
Of the 163 arrested, 41 will be charged with homicide, said spokesman Emmanuel Ojukwu. The other 122 will be charged with rioting, arson and possession of firearms, he said.
More than 200 people died in the March 7 massacre, according to some estimates. They took place in predominately Christian towns near the city of Jos, where about 150 people, mostly Muslims, were reported killed in January.
The region lies on a faith-based fault line between Muslim-dominated northern Nigeria and the mainly Christian south.
Ojukwu said the ethnic backgrounds of those arrested are mixed, but they are all from the area near Jos.
Human Rights Watch said the attacks by Muslims with guns, machetes and knives apparently were in retaliation for the previous attacks against Islamic communities and the theft of cattle from herdsmen.
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