Survivors of the latest wave of inter-ethnic violence, in which women and children were hacked to death or burned alive in their homes, have denounced the authorities for failing to intervene in time.
Relatives of the dead attended funerals on Monday for the victims of the three-hour orgy of violence in three Christian villages close to the northern city of Jos.
Witnesses have blamed the massacre on members of the mainly Muslim Fulani ethnic group, and according to media reports Muslim villagers were warned two days before attack via text messages to their phones.
The security forces said they had detained 95 suspects in the violence.
"We have over 500 killed in three villages and the survivors are busy burying their dead," said state information commissioner Gregory Yenlong.
"People were attacked with axes, daggers and cutlasses - many of them children, the aged and pregnant women."
Distress calls 'ignored'
Around 200 people were being treated in hospital, said the information ministry.
But the Plateau State Christian Elders Consultative Forum (PSCEF) complained that it had taken the army two hours to react after receiving a distress call.
By that time, "the attackers had finished their job and left", they said.
Acting President Goodluck Jonathan has already sacked his chief security advisor.
The explosion of violence was just the latest between rival ethnic and religious groups.
In January, 326 people died in clashes in and around Jos, according to police although rights activists put the overall toll at more than 550.
But John Onaiyekan, the archbishop of the capital Abuja, told Vatican Radio that the violence was rooted not in religion but in social, economic and tribal differences.
Feud, deadly reprisals
"It is a classic conflict between pastoralists and farmers, except that all the Fulani are Muslims and all the Berom are Christians," he said.
Fulani are mainly nomadic cattle rearers while Beroms are traditionally farmers.
Locals said Sunday's attacks were the result of a feud which had been first ignited by a theft of cattle and then fuelled by deadly reprisals.
Rights activists also said the slaughter appeared to be revenge for the January attacks, in which mainly Muslims were killed.
On Monday, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi expressed the Roman Catholic Church's "sadness" at the "horrible acts of violence".
Much of the violence was centred around the village of Dogo Nahawa, where gangs set fire to straw-thatched mud huts as they went on their rampage.
Witnesses said armed gangs had scared people out of their homes by firing into the air but most of the killings were the result of machete attacks.
Victims 'caught unawares'
"We were caught unawares... and as we tried to escape, the Fulani who were already waiting slaughtered many of us," said Dayop Gyang, of Dogo Nahawa.
Gbong Gwon Jos, a Muslim resident of Dogo Nahawa, told The Nation daily he had received advanced warnings of the attacks.
"I got a text message about movement of the people."
Witnesses told Human Rights Watch (HRW) that some of the attackers were former residents of the villages who had fled previous inter-community conflicts.
"I recognized a few of (the attackers') voices," one witness told them.
"This kind of terrible violence has left thousands dead in Plateau State in the past decade, but no one has been held accountable," said HRW's senior West Africa researcher Corinne Dufka.
"It's time to draw a line in the sand. The authorities need to protect these communities, bring the perpetrators to book, and address the root causes of violence," she added.
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