Human rights groups demand inquiry into Nigerian army raid on Shiite Muslims

Human rights advocates have called for an investigation following the Nigerian army’s raid on a Shia Muslim sect, in which hundreds of people were reportedly killed.
Details of the weekend violence have been slow to emerge, with the three attacked areas of the northern town on lockdown as late as Tuesday.
No one was allowed to enter or leave those areas during the lockdown. Amnesty International said in a statement that the shooting of members of the sect “must be urgently investigated … and anyone found responsible for unlawful killings must be brought to justice.”
    The bloodshed was yet another blow to Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, which is already beset by a six-year-old insurgency waged by the violent Islamist group Boko Haram. Ibrahim Musa, a spokesman for the Shia Islamic Movement in Nigeria, said soldiers on Monday carried away about 200 bodies from around the home of the sect’s leader Ibraheem Zakzaky, who was himself badly wounded and whose whereabouts have not been disclosed by the authorities. undreds more corpses were in the mortuary, Musa added. Human rights activists said hundreds of people, perhaps as many as 1,000, were killed.
     The army said troops attacked sites in Zaria after 500 Shias blocked the convoy of the army chief and tried to kill him on Saturday. A report from the military police said some people were crawling through tall grass towards General Tukur Buratai’s vehicle “with the intent to attack the vehicle with [a] petrol bomb,” while others “suddenly resorted to firing gunshots from the direction of the mosque”.