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Human rights groups have released satellite images showing widespread, catastrophic destruction of two Nigerian towns in which up to 2,000 people were reported killed by the hardline militant group, Boko Haram.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch on Thursday published images of Baga and the nearby town of Doron Baga, on the shores of Lake Chad, in the far north of Borno State in northeast Nigeria.

The attacks on January 3 are feared to be the worst in the group's six-year insurgency in Nigeria. Up to 2,000 people were reported dead, although the Nigerian military disputed that figure as unreliable and said about 150 were killed.

Human Rights Watch said the exact death toll was unknown and quoted one local resident as saying: "No one stayed back to count the bodies."

Amnesty said the images suggested "devastation of catastrophic proportions", with more than 3,700 structures - 620 in Baga and 3,100 in Doron Baga - damaged or completely destroyed.

One enhanced infrared image shows the Doron Baga before it was attacked by Boko Haram on Janurary 3, and another after dated January 7. Many buildings no longer exist in the town. The red areas indicate healthy vegitation.

HRW said 11 percent of Baga and 57 percent of Doron Baga was destroyed, mostly by fire. The groups also presented evidence of Boko Haram atrocities in the attack.

Amnesty said on Thursday that survivors told them that Boko Haram fighters killed a woman as she was in labour, during indiscriminate fire that also cut down small children.


"Half of the baby boy [was] out and she died like this," the unnamed witness was quoted as saying.

A man in his fifties added: "They killed so many people. 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."

	The town of Doron Baga, before and after the attack by Boko Haram. Red indicates vegitation.

Another woman said: "I don't know how many but there were bodies everywhere we looked."

Witnesses spoken to by the AFP news agency also described decomposing bodies in the streets of the towns.

The medical charity Doctors Without Borders said on Tuesday that its team in the Borno State capital, Maiduguri, was providing assistance to 5,000 survivors of the attack. The UN refugee agency has said that more than 11,300 Nigerian refugees have fled into neighbouring Chad.

Amnesty said it believed the attack was Boko Haram's "largest and most destructive" in its fight to establish an Islamic state in northeast Nigeria.

"The deliberate killing of civilians and destruction of their property are war crimes and crimes against humanity and must be duly investigated," it added.