KANUNA, Nigeria - Rioting between Muslims and Christians in the northern Nigerian city of Kaduna has claimed at least 100 lives, the Red Cross said Friday, amid Muslim fury over an article on the miss world pageant.

AFP journalists found the center of the sprawling city tense but calm just after midday (1100 GMT), with a massive security presence and burned debris from earlier fighting in the streets.

Federal officials were in Kaduna for talks with religious leaders, who have appealed for calm following three days of bloody disturbances, state spokesman Muktar Sirajo told AFP.

An AFP reporter saw soldiers seizing weapons from travelers arriving by bus from the larger city of Kano to the north. Burnt tires showed where roads had been blocked by barricades.

The fighting began Wednesday when Muslim youths burned down a newspaper office in protest at a "blasphemous" article which suggested that the Prophet Mohammed would have liked to marry a miss world beauty queen.

The international pageant is due to take place in the Nigerian capital Abuja on December 7 and the presence of 90 young women contestants in the country during the holy month of Ramazan has offended the conservative sensibilities of many Muslims.

But since the fighting started in Kaduna the riots have degenerated into a street battle between parts of the city's rival Muslim and Christian communities, local agencies said Friday.

Similar clashes there two years ago left more than 2,000 people dead.

George Bennet, regional representative of the International Federation of the Red Cross, said that a 50-strong Nigerian Red Cross emergency team in Kaduna had confirmed 100 deaths.

"There are also indications that the trouble has flared again this morning," he told AFP in Lagos.

Earlier, a spokesman for the Nigerian Red Cross was unable to confirm the death toll, but said that at least 521 injured people had been evacuated by volunteer medical teams to city hospitals.