Officials were counting the dead in a central Nigerian city yesterday after two days of violent clashes between Christian and Muslim gangs.

Nearly 400 bodies are reported to have been received at the main mosque in Jos, while there are also expected to be a significant number of Christian casualties. Thousands of people fled their homes in the city after rival mobs burned houses, shops, and several churches and mosques in the worst sectarian violence in the country since 2004.

Witnesses said sporadic gunfire could still be heard yesterday morning, as the army patrolled the city following a 24-hour curfew, during which soldiers had orders to shoot on sight.

"The situation ... is gradually returning to normal," Brigadier Emeka Onwuamaegbu told Agence France-Presse. "There've not been any cases this morning of any destruction or violence."

A police spokesman said there were "many dead" but there has been no official confirmation of the number killed.

The violence was triggered by elections in Plateau state, where Jos is the capital. It sits at the fertile crossroads between Nigeria's Christian south and Muslim north, and has a history of religious strife.

The mainly Christian-backed People's Democratic party, which currently holds federal power, was reported to have won the poll - the first in Jos in more than a decade - on Thursday. But supporters of the All Nigeria People's party, which has strong Muslim support, suspected vote-rigging after the official results were not posted at the ballot counting centres.

Clashes between gangs of Hausa Muslims and mostly Christian Beroms began on Thursday night and continued into Saturday afternoon. Security forces were deployed from neighbouring states to try to quell the violence.

Patrolling on foot and in armoured personnel carriers, the soldiers detained more than 500 people. The road from the north was blocked and flights to the city cancelled. Local religious and ethnic leaders made appeals for calm on the radio.

Murtala Sani Hashim, who was responsible for registering bodies brought to the main mosque in Jos, said yesterday that the tally of the dead was 367. The Jos University Teaching Hospital had received 25 bodies, and 154 injured people. "Gunshot wounds, machete injuries - those are the two main types," said Dr Aboi Madaki, the hospital's director of clinical services.

Dan Tom, a Nigerian Red Cross official, said some bodies had not yet been cleared off the streets. "Over 10,000 people have been displaced from their homes and are now seeking refuge in churches, mosques, and army and police barracks," he said.

Communal violence in Nigeria, which has a roughly equal population of Christians and Muslims, is often inflamed by the country's rough politics. Local elections are always tense because state authorities control huge budgets.

But competition for resources at an individual level is often the main cause of clashes. In Nigeria's "middle belt", tensions have been simmering for years between mainly Christians and animist minority groups, regarded as indigenous to the area, and Hausa settlers and migrants from the Muslim north. In 2001, 1,000 people died in sectarian fighting in Jos.