– Satellite images –
Amnesty on Thursday also published satellite images of Baga and Doron Baga, 2.5 kilometres away, which it said showed the scale of the attack.
Aerial shots of the two towns – which have been hit previously by fighting – were shown the day before the Islamists moved in and four days later, after they had razed homes and businesses.
“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,” said the group’s Nigeria researcher, Daniel Eyre.
More than 3,700 structures were damaged or completely destroyed – 620 in Baga and more than 3,100 in Doron Baga, Amnesty said but added that the number could be higher.
Local officials have said Baga and at least 16 surrounding settlements were burnt to the ground and at least 20,000 people fled. READ: Boko Haram kidnaps at least 185 in Nigeria.
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.
Eyre said the eye-witnesses and images reinforced the view that the attack was Boko Haram’s “largest and most destructive” in its fight to establish a hardline Islamic state in northeast Nigeria.
The statement added: “The deliberate killing of civilians and destruction of their property by Boko Haram are war crimes and crimes against humanity and must be duly investigated.”
Some 300 women were said to have been rounded up and detained at a school, witnesses told Amnesty, adding that older women, mothers and children were released after four days but younger women kept.
The Baga attack came before presidential and parliamentary elections in Nigeria next month and an upsurge in violence apparently designed to undermine the legitimacy of the vote.
On Saturday, 19 people were killed when explosives strapped to a young girl said to be as young as 10 detonated at a crowded market in Maiduguri.
Four people were also killed when two female suicide bombers hit another market in the commercial capital of neighbouring Yobe State, Potiskum, on Sunday.
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