The Human Rights Watch Wednesday has accused Nigerian soldiers of killing unarmed Shiite children with no provocation before unjustified raids that killed hundreds of the minority group in the country.
“It is almost impossible to see how a roadblock by angry young men could justify the killings of hundreds of people. At best it was a brutal overreaction and at worst it was a planned attack on the minority Shia group,” said the Africa director of Human Rights Watch, Daniel Bekele.
As many as 1,000 people may have been killed, rights activists say, sparking protests in Nigeria’s mainly Muslim north that spread to Tehran, the Iranian capital, and New Delhi in India.
His Shiite Islamic Movement in Nigeria said Tuesday that people wounded in the attacks are dying in military and police detention because they are being denied medical care.
Spokesman Ibrahim Musa also said the Kaduna state government has taken over from the military in destroying property of the movement, estimated to have 3 million followers. He said a school and cemetery were bulldozed Monday.
“The history of the circumstances that engendered the outbreak of militant insurgency in the past, with cataclysmic consequences that Nigeria is yet to recover from, should not be allowed to repeat itself,” warned a statement Monday from the sultan of Sokoto, who is president of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs.