(taken from msnbc.com)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35759877/ns/world_news-africa/
"At least 200 people, most of them Christians, were slaughtered on Sunday, according to residents, aid groups and journalists. The local government gave a figure more than twice that amount, but offered no casualty list or other information to substantiate it.The violence in three mostly Christian villages on Sunday appeared to be reprisal attacks following the January unrest in Jos — when some 300 people, most of them Muslims, were killed, Red Cross spokesman Robin Waubo said. State officials did not comment on the cause of the latest attacks.
Plateau State spokesman Gregory Yenlong said Sunday's toll could be much higher. "Soldiers are patrolling and everywhere remains calm ... We are estimating 500 people killed but I think it should be a little bit above that," he said.
Death tolls have been highly politicized in previous outbreaks of unrest in central Nigeria, with various factions accused of either exaggerating the figures for political ends or downplaying them to try to douse the risk of reprisals.
On Sunday, the bodies of children tangled with each other in a local morgue, including a diaper-clad toddler. Another young victim appeared to have been scalped, while others had severed hands and feet. One woman victim in the morgue appeared to have been stripped below the waist, but later covered by a strip of black cloth.
Jos has been under a dusk-til-dawn curfew enforced by the military since January's religious-based violence. It was not clear how the attackers managed to elude the military curfew early Sunday.Acting President Goodluck Jonathan said security agencies would be stationed along Plateau state's borders to keep outsiders from coming in with more weapons and fighters.
"(We will) undertake strategic initiatives to confront and defeat these roving bands of killers," he said in a statement.
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