Nigerian troops shot dead at least 30 people during raids in the northeast city of Maiduguri, bastion of the radical Islamist sect Boko Haram, witnesses and hospital staff said on Friday.
Boko Haram says it wants to create an Islamic state in Nigeria and its fighters have killed hundreds in bomb and gun attacks targeting security forces, politicians and civilians since launching an uprising in 2009.
The sect has become the top security threat to Africa's biggest energy-producing state. Three witnesses told Reuters that soldiers from the Joint Task Force (JTF) raided several neighbourhoods in Maiduguri late on Thursday and arrested or shot dead dozens of young men.
"More than 30 bodies were brought in by the JTF yesterday and most of them were young men," a nurse at one Maiduguri hospital Yagana Bukar told Reuters. The military spokesperson in Maiduguri did not respond to requests for comment.
"Yesterday around the Gambaru area, soldiers raided places with an insider who pointed to suspected terrorists and they just killed some of them on the spot and others were taken away," a civil servant who saw the attacks told Reuters, asking not to be named.
He said he saw more than 40 dead bodies. Amnesty International said in a report on Thursday that the JTF had committed human rights abuses in its fight against Boko Haram that were fuelling the insurgency. The report said the JTF had carried out executions in the streets and tortured people without bringing any charges against them. Nigerian police said they would investigate the matter.
