Fighting erupted in Numan on Tuesday after the north-eastern town's Christian majority objected to local Muslims building a mosque with a minaret overlooking a local chief's palace, officials and witnesses said.
Adamawa State's Governor Boni Haruna visited the scene on Wednesday and burst into tears when he found town's hospital mortuary filled with 50 bodies left behind from the fighting, state radio reporter Ibrahim Abdulazeez said.
Haruna's spokesman Willie Zalwalie - who had earlier told AFP that seven more bodies had already been transferred to the state capital Yola - would not confirm the death toll, but said that the governor had been angry and upset.
"The governor was in Numan this afternoon where he declared a dusk until dawn curfew," he said by telephone from Yola.
"He also gave an order to security personnel drafted to the town to shoot anybody they see trying to inflict harm on anyone or trying to destroy anything," he added.
"The curfew will last until order is restored. Of course the governor wept, and anyone would do the same in such a situation," Zalwalie said. He confirmed the visit to the morgue, but said it was too dark inside to count the bodies.
Numan's Muslims are rebuilding their main mosque after it was destroyed on June 8 last year, when 100 people were killed in a riot triggered by the murder of a Christian evangelist, Esther Jinkai, allegedly by a Muslim water seller.
Zalwalie said the reconstruction project ran into opposition from a chief of the Bachama tribe, Numan's Christian majority group, who claimed the mosque's minaret is taller than its predecessor and overlooks his palace courtyard.
"The issue was brought to the attention of the local council which ordered a suspension of work on the minaret pending an amicable resolution of the dispute," Zalwalie explained.
"However, the Muslims insisted on continuing with the work yesterday and the Christians objected. This led to the clash," he said, adding that police and soldiers had been deployed to the town to restore order.
It was not immediately clear whether the victims of the fighting were Muslims, Christians or people from both sides of the divide.
Abdulazeez told AFP that police and troops had also been drafted into the state capital to prevent the violence spreading.
"It was tense yesterday night and police and soldiers had to be deployed all over the town to keep the peace because dead bodies of those killed in Numan and those injured were brought to the general hospital," Abdulazeez said.
"Police had to fire teargas to disperse an angry crowd that gathered outside the hospital, wanting to get in to see the corpses and the injured," he said.
Last month fighting between Christians and Muslims killed more than 200 people in Nigeria's central highlands and left dozens more dead in the northern city of Kano, triggering fears of large-scale sectarian conflict.
More than 60,000 people have fled their homes to escape the fighting.
President Olusegun Obasanjo responded to the violence by declaring a state of emergency in the central state of Plateau, suspending its assembly and its elected governor and imposing a retired general as local administrator.
More than 10,000 people have been killed in mob violence in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, since the return of civilian rule in 1999.
News of the latest fighting came as millions of Nigerians joined a general strike to protest rising fuel prices. Large numbers of police were deployed to oversee the expected protests, but there were no reports of serious unrest.