150 bodies recovered from wells after Nigerian massacre

At least 150 bodies were recovered from wells following deadly Muslim-Christian clashes in central Nigeria, a village headman said yesterday, taking the unofficial death toll past 400.

"So far we have picked 150 bodies from the wells. But 60 more people are still missing", Umar Baza, head of Kuru Karama village near the city of Jos, told AFP by telephone.

"We took an inventory of the displaced people from this village, sheltering in three camps, and we realise that 60 people can still not be accounted for," he said.

"We believe there are more bodies in the wells."

The head of the Muslim volunteer team for the victims' burial, Mohammed Shittu, said further searches would carried out.

"Now we have 150 bodies in all, taken from the wells as from Thursday," he told AFP.

"From the account of survivors, some people fleeing attacks were ambushed and killed in the bush. That is why we are going there to search for more bodies."

Global rights watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW) yesterday urged Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan to order "an immediate criminal investigation into credible reports of a massacre of at least 150 Muslim residents of a town in central Nigeria."

A Muslim official who visited Kuru Karama to arrange for the burial of bodies told HRW that 121 corpses had been recovered, including those of 22 young children. Dozens of them were "stuffed down wells or in sewage pits", HRW said in a statement.

The state government has given no official death toll for the violence, which broke out last Sunday in Jos, capital of Plateau State, and spread to nearby towns and villages.

Some 18,000 people fled the fighting to take refuge in military barracks, churches and mosques around the city, according to the Red Cross, as the government called in the army to restore order.

Religious leaders and medical workers said they had counted 288 bodies by last Wednesday, before the dead started to be recovered from Kuru Karama, a Muslim enclave in a Christian region 30 kilometres south of Jos.

Another 26 bodies were found and buried yesterday in a Jos cemetery.