The military in Nigeria on Tuesday exhumed seven bodies from fresh, shallow graves in an area plagued by clashes between Muslims and Christians that have left hundreds dead.
The bodies, discovered in a predominantly Christian village near the sectarian flashpoint of Jos, bore machete cuts, an AFP reporter said.
They were buried in three shallow graves in remote forests of Rahoss village, around 30 kilometres (18 miles) south of Jos, capital of Nigeria’s central volatile Plateau state.
The army officers who took journalists to the scene did not give details.
Jos has long been the centre of ethno-religious violence in a country whose 150 million-strong population is divided almost equally between Christians and Muslims.
Herdsmen from the mainly Muslim Fulani clan launched attacks on five Christian villages in the area in March, slaughtering more than 500 people, according to state officials.
The unrest appeared to be reprisals for earlier violence.
Several new clashes were reported in recent days in Plateau and nearby states.
On Monday five Christian farmers were killed in fresh attacks by suspected Muslim nomads, according to Kayode Ogundele, director of operations for a special military force deployed in the wake of the violence.
The Fulani nomads allegedly hacked to death the farmers who were working on their farms in Christian-dominated Riyom village, which borders Rahoss.
In neighbouring Kaduna state, a pastoralist group said Tuesday at least six Muslim Fulani nomads were slain in a weekend attack by suspected Christian Berom militias.
Police confirmed the night raid but said that only three people were killed.
A gang of Beroms armed with guns and axes raided a Fulani settlement in Kauru, a village bordering Plateau state, according to Saleh Momaleh from the Kaduna branch of Pastoral Resolve body of nomads in West Africa.
In nearby Muslim-dominated Bauchi state, meanwhile, sectarian tension has been simmering following the murder of a pastor and his wife, with Christians calling for revenge.
An overnight attack on Riyom last month by marauding Fulani nomads claimed 13 lives while a dozen houses were burnt.
The Nigerian army said Monday it had averted an attack by suspected Muslim extremists on a mainly Christian village on the outskirts of Jos, killing two gunmen.
Reporters meanwhile saw around 20 machete-wielding angry youths who set up barricades along the main highway from Jos leading to Nigeria’s capital Abuja, stopping and searching motorists.