Nigeria's Red Cross says raids and reprisal attacks have left 52 people dead in Christian villages in central Nigeria.

A spokesman for a government security task force set up to curb years of violence around Jos (jahs) says assailants numbering in
he hundreds launched what he describes as "sophisticated attacks" on several villages near the city yesterday. He says police and soldiers battled the attackers for hours.

A Red Cross official says more than 300 people have been displaced by the violence. He also says a pair of lawmakers on their way to a mass burial for the victims today were ambushed and killed.

Jos is located in an area known as Nigeria's "middle belt," between the mainly Christian south and the predominantly Muslim north. It's been torn apart in recent years by violence between ethnic and religious groups. The rise of Islamist insurgents known as Boko Haram (BOH'-koh hah-RAHM') has fanned the tensions.