NEW YORK: Nigeria’s military killed and quickly buried at least 300 Shia Muslims in an unjustified attack in the northern Zaria city earlier this month, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said.
The bodies were buried without family members’ permission, it added.
Deaths sparked outrage among Shia around the world.
HRW said Nigeria’s army version of events “does not stack up” and called for an independent judicial investigation into what happened.
The Shia community has rejected a committee set up by the government to look into the incident, saying it would be biased.
“At best it was a brutal overreaction and at worst it was a planned attack on the minority Shia group,” HRW Africa direction Daniel Bekele said.
The military accuses the community of trying to assassinate army chief Gen Tukur Buratai, which it denies.
It also released images purportedly showing Shia with sticks and some throwing stones at them when they tried to pass through a makeshift roadblock erected by the group.
But Human Rights Watch says there has been no “credible information” that any soldiers were injured or killed.
It is difficult to determine an accurate death toll but the information was gathered from hospital sources and eyewitnesses, the campaign group added in a statement.
Nigeria’s Islamic spiritual leader, the Sultan of Sokoto, has warned that the raids on the sect, known as the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), could spark a new insurgency.
Militant Islamist group Boko Haram has killed thousands of people in its pursuit of an Islamic state, and has attacked the IMN.
Meanwhile Muslims have held demonstrations in several cities in northern Nigeria to protest the recent killings.
People took to the streets in the cities of Kano, Katsina and Sokoto after Friday prayers to both express outrage at the atrocity and mark the birth anniversary of Prophet Mohammad (Pbuh).
The protesters called for the release of prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Ibrahim al-Zakzaky and other prisoners jailed during the armys deadly crackdown.
Abdulhamid Bello, who led the rally in Kano, said the protesters mourn the deaths of as many as 1,000 Shias killed by the army in Zaria from December 12 to 14.
He read a statement, saying the marchers mourn the killings and the detention of their leader and that justice must be served.
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