Military is accused of killing civilians

JOS, Nigeria — Nigerian troops have killed dozens of civilians and razed scores of homes to avenge the deaths of six soldiers, community leaders and residents of central Plateau state charged on Sunday.

A spokesman for the Special Task Force said its troops are involved only in an ongoing battle with a tribal militia that residents said killed six soldiers and mutilated their bodies last week.

Traditional ruler Chief Jessie Miri told reporters as many as 80 people have been killed in weekend attacks by soldiers in his Wase district.

Community leader Comrade Jangle Lohbut called a news conference in Plateau state capital Jos to say villages “belonging to Tarok and other tribes were razed and many lives — men, women and children — were lost.”

Plateau state is riven by ethno-religious violence over land use between mainly Christian farmers and mainly Muslim seminomadic cattle herders that has killed thousands over the years.

Nigeria’s military has been accused of many atrocities including the deaths of thousands of detainees in the northeastern Islamist uprising by Boko Haram.

Capt. Iweha said the attackers are not part of Boko Haram.

Elsewhere in Nigeria, after days on the road, hundreds of women and children rescued from Boko Haram were released on Sunday into the care of authorities at an eastern refugee camp in the eastern town of Yola.

Nearly 700 kidnap victims have been freed from the Islamist group's forest stronghold since Tuesday.