Around 5,000 Nigerian activists staged a march Wednesday to demand the sacking of the cabinet and a public appearance by ailing President Umaru Yar'Adua, two weeks after he returned to the country. The police stopped the protesters -- led by prominent Lagos pastor Tunde Bakare -- near the presidential villa where they had planned to present their demands to Acting President Goodluck Jonathan.

Malaysia has deported three terrorism suspects, including a Yemeni, who were among a group detained in January, a government lawyer said Wednesday. Malaysia announced in January it had detained nine foreigners and one Malaysian for "acts of terrorism" and said they were members of a militant organisation tracked down in cooperation with foreign intelligence groups.

Pope Benedict XVI Wednesday denounced the "atrocious violence causing bloodshed in Nigeria" after weekend massacres of mainly Christian villagers around the city of Jos. The pope urged "those with civil and religious responsibility in the country to work towards security and peaceful co-existence of the whole population.

Forty-nine members of the mainly Muslim Fulani clan arrested after weekend attacks on Christian villages are to be charged with murder, the state police chief said Wednesday. "We have 49 Fulanis arrested immediately after the attacks and in their statements they have confessed that they were on a revenge mission," Plateau State commissioner Ikechukwu Aduba told reporters.

A Nigerian state police chief Wednesday revised the death toll from weekend sectarian massacres from 500 to 109, saying an earlier toll by government officials was fabricated. Plateau State police commissioner Ikechukwu Aduba gave a breakdown of the list of people killed and said the "total number of casualties therefore stands at 109".

A Nigerian state police chief Wednesday revised the death toll from weekend sectarian massacres from 500 to 109, saying an earlier toll by government officials was fabricated.

Sustained gunfire sent residents of a mainly Christian settlement near the central Nigerian city of Jos fleeing for cover in a nearby police barracks on Tuesday, residents said. "We heard gunshots reverberating all over the neighbourhood and I could not wait to know who was firing the shots. All people in the neighborhood have fled," Josephine Emmanuel, a resident of Bukka Uku, about four kilometres (three miles) south of Jos told AFP by phone.

Sustained gunfire sent residents of a settlement near the central Nigerian city of Jos fleeing for cover in a nearby police barracks on Tuesday, residents said. "We heard gunshots reverberating all over the neighbourhood and I could not wait to know who was firing the shots. All people in the neighborhood have fled," Josephine Emmanuel, a resident of Bukka Uku, about four kilometres south of Jos told AFP by phone.

The governor of Nigeria's central Plateau state on Tuesday accused the country's military commanders of ignoring warnings of a weekend attack which claimed hundreds of lives of mainly Christian villagers. Jonah Jang said the carnage could have been avoided was it not for a security lapse. He said he had alerted the army commander of movement of armed gangs into Plateau from neighbouring states on Saturday night.

A truck carrying bags of cement killed between 30 and 50 people when the driver lost control and drove into a crowded market in central Nigeria's Kogi State, police said Wednesday. "The accident happened yesterday (Tuesday) in Lokoja. Between 30 and 50 people lost their lives when the driver rammed into the crowded Felele market," state police spokesman Abubakar Mohammed told AFP.