Ethnic and religious clashes have killed more than 200 people in the Nigerian city of Jos

The bodies have been brought to the main mosque in the city but the Red Cross said the final death toll is likely to be much higher.

A senior Nigerian Red Cross official said 218 bodies are awaiting burial. More than 300 people have been injured in the attacks.

The clashes between gangs of Muslim Hausas and mostly Christian Beroms were triggered by a disputed local government chairmanship election.

Authorities have extended a curfew in Jos and ordered the army to shoot on sight to stop more violence.

The governor of Plateau state, of which Jos is the capital, imposed a 24-hour curfew on neighbourhoods of the city that have been racked by violence in which rival gangs burned churches and mosques, forcing thousands to flee their homes.

A statement from the governor's office, read out on local radio, said the security forces had been directed to shoot on sight to enforce the measure. Sporadic violence had continued overnight despite a previous dawn-to-dusk curfew.

Gunfire and explosions heard in the early hours of the morning died down and many streets in the city, which lies at the crossroads between Nigeria's mostly Muslim north and mostly Christian south, were deserted as the military patrolled.

"There are Hausas and Beroms who want to fight each other and the army is in the middle trying to create a buffer zone," one resident said.

The unrest is the most serious of its kind in Africa's most populous nation, roughly equally split between Christians and Muslims, since President Umaru Yar'Adua took power in May 2007.

A spokesman for Plateau state governor Jonah Jang said hundreds of weapons have been retrieved at military roadblocks from vehicles trying to enter the city and that the gangs seemed to be getting arms from sympathisers outside the state.

In 2001, hundreds of people were killed in ethnic-religious street fighting in Jos. Three years later, hundreds died in clashes in the town of Yelwa, leading then-President Olusegun Obasanjo to declare a state of emergency and impose a curfew.

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