Onitsha, Nigeria ? Bodies littered the streets of the southern Nigerian city of Onitsha on Wednesday as the death toll from days of Christian-Muslim violence across this volatile West African nation rose to at least 93.

The sectarian violence was sparked by deadly weekend protests against newspaper caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. It is the worst to hit Nigeria since 2004, when Muslim-Christian skirmishes in the north killed more than 700 people.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with more than 130 million people, is roughly divided between a predominantly Muslim north and a mainly Christian south. Thousands of people have died in religious violence since 2000.

In Onitsha, residents said soldiers fired on a mob of ethnic Igbo Christians that tried to enter the military barracks after reports that ethnic Hausa Muslims sheltering in the barracks had attacked a nearby primary school, killing a number of children.

The claims could not be verified, and it was unclear if the soldiers killed anyone in the mob.