Abuja — Amnesty International (AI) said, yesterday that a climate of fear has spread in parts of the nation's northern region as a result of the atrocities committed by the fundamentalist Islamic Sect Boko Haram and human rights violations perpetrated by security forces deployed to rout them.

The Secretary General of the global human rights body Salil Shetty stated this while presenting AI's findings yesterday in Abuja in a report entitled "Nigeria: Trapped in a cycle of violence".

Police authorities in Abuja, however, disclosed that a comprehensive study of the Amnesty Report just released and making human rights abuse allegations against the force will be investigated though it said the sources of its report cannot be relied upon.

Amnesty International had stated that the brutal actions of Nigeria's security forces in response to Boko Haram's campaign of terror are making an already desperate situation even worse.

According to the report, "people are living in a climate of fear and insecurity, vulnerable to attack from Boko Haram and facing human rights violations at the hands of the very state security forces which should be protecting them.

"The report documents the atrocities carried out by Boko Haram as well as the serious human rights violations carried out by the security forces in response, including enforced disappearances, torture, extra-judicial executions, torching of homes and detention without trial.

"Grave human rights abuses have been committed by Boko Haram including murder, burning down schools and churches and attacking media houses and journalists."

The report further stated that the cycle of attack and counter attack has been marked by unlawful violence on both sides with devastating consequences for the human rights of those trapped in the middle.

Shetty further stated that: "Hundreds of people accused of having links with Boko Haram have been arbitrarily detained by a combination of the Joint Task Force (JTF)- a combined forces group comprising the State Security Service and the Police -commissioned by the President to restore law and order in areas affected by Boko Haram."