Clampdown on Nigerian army after killings claim

The Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo confined his army to barracks in the east of the country as evidence grew that soldiers had murdered up to 200 villagers there, after 19 of their comrades were killed. Defence officials denied they had ordered the raids.

But civilian officials in Benue yesterday showed journalists a grainy, gruesome video film of bodies strewn in deserted village streets, and said 130 people in one village had been shot and seven settlements wrecked between Sunday and Tuesday. Journalists who saw the footage said they could not verify if it was authentic.

The alleged slaughter will test the authority of President Obasanjo, a former military dictator who became civilian leader of Africa's most populous country after an election in 1999. The retired general, a Baptist from the south, walks a tightrope between rival factions. He is under pressure from the Muslim north that, for nearly 40 years, produced most of Nigeria's military leaders. There is regular mischief-making by retired generals who fear the civilian government will undermine their privileges and influence. To add to Nigeria's tensions, it has more than 150 ethnic groups, some with secessionist ambitions.

Reports say the 19 soldiers were abducted by tribal fighters on 12 October, humiliated and killed. They had been deployed to quell ethnic tension in Benue and neighbouring Taraba and Nasarawa states, mainly business and land-access rivalries between tribes, including the Tivs, the Jukuns and Fulanis.

Amnesty International condemned the alleged "act of revenge" and requested an independent inquiry. Benue senators asked the US, Nigeria's closest business partner, and Britain, the former colonial power, to press President Obasanjo to condemn the killings. Senator Daniel Saror and MP Gabriel Suswam said in statement: "It is clear the federal government of Nigeria has approved a plan to eliminate the Tiv people from Taraba and Nasarawa using the Nigerian armed forces of which he [Mr Obasanjo] is the commander-in-chief. Our prayer and appeal to you is that you please use your good offices to prevail on the Nigerian government to halt this gruesome act of ethnic cleansing.''

This week, the President has been hosting a high-profile launch in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, of the New Africa Initiative, an EU-sanctioned "Marshall Plan'' to tackle the continent's problems. Observers have been shocked that he has not made a public statement, only talked on the phone to the Benue governor, George Akume. The governor said the killings were in "half a dozen Tiv villages'' and between 120 and 130 people died in one settlement alone, Gbeji. Local journalists said at least 200 were killed and some bodies were set alight.

President Obasanjo's government is struggling in the worst cycle of ethnic and religious violence since the late 1960s, when the eastern Biafra region declared independence, detonating a civil war. Hundreds have died in northern Nigeria in two years in violence between Christians and Muslims.

Nigerian newspapers compared this week's events to a 1999 attack in the southern Delta region. They said Nigerian security forces massacred hundreds of people to avenge the killing of 12 police officers.