'Hundreds of bodies in town held by Boko Haram'

NIGERIA: Hundreds of skeletons of children, women and men believed killed by Boko Haram have been found in a recaptured Nigerian border town, indicating another atrocity by the Islamic extremists, witnesses say.

A local government committee that entered the north-eastern Nigerian town of Damasak through neighbouring Niger said it also found decomposing bodies of men presumed to be Boko Haram fighters killed when troops from Chad and Niger recaptured the town in March.

"I know that there was a large-scale atrocity, but I cannot tell you the precise number of dead bodies," Senator-elect Abubakar Kyari told reporters on Monday in Maiduguri, the Borno state capital 180 kilometres (110 miles) south-east of Damasak.