Hundreds of people have died in detention facilities in north-east Nigeria as the army tries to crush an Islamist militant rebellion there, according to Amnesty International.
The human rights group said some detainees died from suffocation in overcrowded cells, others from starvation and extra-judicial killings.
It is calling for an urgent investigation into the deaths.
There has not yet been an official response to the report.
But the Nigerian army has rejected all previous accusations of human rights abuses.
A senior Nigerian army officer told Amnesty that at least 950 people had died in military custody during the first half of this year.
Most had been accused of having links to the Islamist militant group Boko Haram, Amnesty said.
Boko Haram is fighting to overthrow Nigeria’s government to create an Islamic state, and has launched a number of attacks on schools.
About 50 students were shot dead earlier this month in their hostel, in an attack blamed on Boko Haram.
A state of emergency was declared in three northern states in May – Yobe, Borno and Adamawa – in response to thousands of deaths in militant attacks.
Many schools have been attacked by suspected Boko Haram militants.
But while most of the recent news from has been about these civilian killings, Will Ross says this latest Amnesty report shines a light on another grim side of life in northern Nigeria.
At times, the number of people killed in these detention centres was so high that there were regular mass burials, Amnesty said.
BBC
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