SOKOTO, Nigeria – A man was beaten to death by a mob in northern Nigeria as Muslim sects clashed after the shooting of a popular cleric, witnesses said Thursday. The cleric later died.

Soldiers and police set up roadblocks and patrolled the streets with rifles and tear gas in response to the violence.

An Associated Press reporter saw the body of the man, who was accused in Wednesday’s shooting of Sunni cleric Umar Danshiya at a mosque in the capital of the desert state of Sokoto. The cleric was well-known for his anti-Shiite sermons.

Nura Mohammed, who was taking Danshiya home by motorbike taxi after morning prayers, said three gunmen on motorbikes shot the cleric in the head.

Later, a mob of Danshiya’s followers wielding sticks and machetes attacked several Shiites in retaliation.

The sultan of Sokoto, the spiritual head of Nigeria’s Muslims, said Danshiya had died Thursday morning after lapsing into a coma. Sultan Mohammadu Sa’ad Abubakar appealed for calm, saying on local radio: “Do not take the law into your own hands … the security agencies are investigating.”

At the news of Danshiya’s death, some supporters cut tree branches with machetes and fixed them to their vehicles, a common form of protest in Nigeria.

Nigeria’s 140 million people are roughly equally divided between Muslims and Christians and the country has frequent ethnic and religious clashes. Thousands of people have been killed since the end of military rule eight years ago. Residents say that ethnic or political differences are often exploited by powerful locals for economic and political reasons.

Most Nigerian Muslims are Sunni, as are most Muslims throughout the world. The Sunni-Shiite doctrinal split dates to the early days of Islam.

Associated Press Writer Salisu Rabiu contributed to this report from Kano, Nigeria

A service of the Associated Press(AP)