ABUJA, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Nigeria's military burned down
villages and forcibly displaced hundreds of people in its fight
against Islamist insurgents in the country's northeast, rights
group Amnesty International alleged on Friday.
Nigeria's military, which has frequently been accused of
human rights abuses in its decade-long fight against Boko Haram
and more recently Islamic State's West African branch, did not
immediately respond to requests for comment.
Previous allegations have sparked investigations by the
International Criminal Court in the Hague and hampered Nigeria's
ability to purchase arms, a source of frustration for its
military's leaders. However, convictions of soldiers have been
rare and the military has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.
In the latest allegations, Amnesty said Nigerian soldiers
razed three villages after forcing hundreds of men and women to
leave their homes in the northeastern state of Borno in January.
The human rights group said it interviewed 12 victims and
reviewed satellite images that showed several large fires in the
area and almost every structure razed.
Residents described soldiers going house to house and
rounding people up, then making them walk to a main road and
board trucks, it said.
"We saw our houses go into flames," a woman of around 70
told Amnesty. "We all started crying."
The trucks took more than 400 people to a camp for people
displaced by the conflict in Maiduguri, the main city in the
region.
"These brazen acts of razing entire villages, deliberately
destroying civilian homes and forcibly displacing their
inhabitants with no imperative military grounds, should be
investigated as possible war crimes," said Osai Ojigho, director
for Amnesty International Nigeria, in Friday's statement
detailing the group's investigation.
Soldiers also detained six men, beating some of them, and
held them for almost a month before releasing them without
charge on Jan. 30, Amnesty said.
It cited Nigerian Army statements from the time that said
six Boko Haram suspects had been captured and hundreds of
captives freed from the militants.
"They say they saved us from Boko Haram, but it's a lie,"
said one man aged roughly 65, according to Amnesty. "Boko Haram
isn't coming to our village."
Amnesty's report was published as the military struggles to
contain the insurgencies, particularly Islamic State. Last July,
troops began to withdraw to larger garrisons, dubbed "super
camps", from smaller bases that were frequently overrun with
heavy loss of lives. That has left the military on the defensive and the
insurgents able to roam across large swathes of territory and
carry out attacks, often on civilians, with few repercussions.