Satellite images of Nigerian towns attacked by Boko Haram show widespread destruction and suggest a high death toll, Amnesty International says.
The images show some 3,700 structures damaged or destroyed in Baga and Doron Baga in Borno State this month, Amnesty said.
But Defence Headquarters spokesman, Major General Chris Olukolade, has disputed reports that as many as 2,000 were killed, putting the toll at just 150.
In a release issued earlier in the week, Olukolade said the bulk of those that had been killed had been ‘terrorists’.
Amnesty cited witnesses saying that militants had killed indiscriminately.
It said the damage was “catastrophic”.
There has been a surge in violence linked to Boko Haram.
In the past week, there have been several attacks, including by suspected child suicide bombers.
Nigeria is to hold elections next month, amid growing doubts whether they can successfully go ahead in all parts of the country.
Amnesty said the attack on Baga and Doron Baga, neighbouring towns in the far north-east of Nigeria, was the largest and deadliest Boko Haram assault that it had analysed.
It said about 620 structures had been destroyed in Baga, and more than 3,100 in Doro Baga.
The before and after satellite images were taken on January 2 and January 7.
Healthy vegetation is shown in red on the graphics.
Many wooden fishing boats that dot the shoreline on January 2 are no longer visible five days later.
“These detailed images show devastation of catastrophic proportions in two towns, one of which was almost wiped off the map in the space of four days,” Daniel Eyre, an Amnesty researcher, said in a statement.
“It represents a deliberate attack on civilians whose homes, clinics and schools are now burnt out ruins,” Eyre said.
The BBC’s Will Ross says that while the images show the destructive nature of Boko Haram, they do not help establish just how many people were killed.
Last week, Musa Alhaji Bukar, a senior government official in the area, said that fleeing residents told him that Baga, which had a population of about 10,000, was now “virtually non-existent”.
“It has been burnt down,” he told the BBC Hausa service.
Officials said militants had attacked Baga on January 7, four days after overrunning a multinational military base in the town that had been abandoned by Nigerian troops.
Amnesty’s Adotei Akwei told the BBC that although it was still difficult to access the area where the attack took place, the Nigerian government was “grossly understating” the death toll.
“They killed so many people,” one man told the group. “I saw maybe around 100 killed at that time in Baga. I ran to the bush. As we were running, they were shooting and killing.”
One witness was quoted as saying that victims included small children and a woman in labour.
Afterwards, militants drove into the surrounding country, rounding up women, children and the elderly, unnamed witnesses told the group.
“Boko Haram took around 300 women and kept us in a school in Baga,” one woman, who Amnesty said had been held for four days, was quoted as saying.
“They released the older women, mothers and most of the children after four days but are still keeping the younger women.”
Meanwhile, Chad said on Wednesday it was ready to actively help Cameroon fight Boko Haram militants attacking it from Nigeria, and called on other countries in the region to translate pledges of support into concrete action.
Chad’s offer comes days after an appeal by Cameroon’s President Paul Biya for international military help to fight the Islamist militant group that has seized swathes of northern Nigeria and is threatening neighbours who share borders with the north-eastern zones occupied by Boko Haram.
Cameroon’s north is now regularly attacked by the Islamists, who highlighted their regional threat this month by seizing a military base in Nigeria meant to be used by a joint force from Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Cameroon to fight them.
“Faced by this situation that seriously threatens the security and stability of Chad … the Chadian government will not sit here and do nothing,” government spokesman Hassan Sylla Bakari said in a statement on Wednesday.
“The government expresses its solidarity with Cameroon and is ready to provide active support in the courageous and determined response of its armed forces against the criminals and terrorists of Boko Haram.”
The statement did not give any detail on what form the support would take but it followed a visit to Chad by Cameroon’s defence minister on Wednesday.
Cameroon has dispatched elite troops to its north, where militants have launched a series of raids and set up training camps. The government said it killed 143 militants in fighting on Monday.
Military sources in Niger, to the west, said gunmen suspected of being from Boko Haram killed a civilian in the village of Gaidam Tchoukou, in Diffa region.
Chad has a reputation for one of the region’s best militaries and helped French forces drive al Qaeda-linked Islamists from northern Mali in 2013.
France has sought to overcome lingering distrust between the countries in the region by helping coordinate efforts against Boko Haram.
However, Boko Haram highlighted the scale of the task to pull together an effective regional response when it seized the headquarters of the regional task force whose mission is to tackle the Islamists.
“It is time for our nations to translate into clear and concrete action the goodwill we have repeatedly spoken of,” the Chadian government added in its statement.
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