LAGOS, Feb. 18 (Xinhuanet) -- At least 16 people were killed and 11 churches burned on Saturday in violent protests against the cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad in northern Nigeria, police said.

    "Two states are affected. The first happened in Maiduguri, Borno state. Fifteen people were killed in the crisis. Eleven churches were burned, " police spokesman Haz Iwendi told Xinhua from the capital Abuja.

    "The second is in Katsina state. One people killed, two policemen were injured."

    He said that normality had been restored after police arrested 115 people in Maiduguri and 105 in Katsina and that a curfew has been imposed.

    These were the first violent protests in Nigeria over the cartoons.

    Early this month, lawmakers in the northern state of Kano revoked a 3.5 billion naira (27 million U.S. dollars) contract forpurchase of buses from a Danish company in protest against the cartoons.

    "Bids by Danish companies for the construction of our Independent Power Plant have also been thrown out. The contract isworth 8 billion naira (62 million dollars)," spokesman for Kano state governor, Malam Sule Ya'u Sule, said at that time.

    Nigeria's 130 million people are roughly equally divided between Muslims in the north and Christians in the south. Anti-Christians riots and other violence in the north, especially Kano,are common.

    There has been a wave of protests across the Islamic world overthe cartoons first published in last September by a Danish paper, which have since been reprinted in Norway and other European countries. Enditem