DAKAR, Senegal — Officials and human rights groups in Nigeria said Monday that about 500 people had died in weekend ethnic violence near the central city of Jos, considerably more than what had initially been reported.

A government spokesman said Sunday that the dead numbered more than 300. The victims were Christians killed by rampaging Muslim herdsmen, officials and human rights workers said, apparently in reprisal for similar attacks on Muslims in January.

The head of a leading Nigerian rights group, Shehu Sani of the Civil Rights Congress, said in a telephone interview on Monday that his organization had counted 492 bodies, mainly in the village of Dogo Nahawa.

A spokesmen for the government of Plateau State, Gregory Yenlong, said the number of dead was about 500. “Those that were injured have been dying,” he said. “The communities are taking inventory.”

Those figures, however, did not seem to represent the final tally.

Shamaki Gad Peter of the League for Human Rights, who was in the Dogo Nahawa area, put the provisional death toll at around 250.

In Abuja, the Nigerian capital, the International Committee of the Red Cross said it could not yet give an estimate of the number of dead as its representatives had not been able to reach all of the villages that were attacked.

The killings took place in Plateau State near the city of Jos, for years a hotbed of ethnic and religious violence near the dividing line between the country’s mainly Christian south and Muslim north.

Hundreds on both sides were killed as recently as January, though the victims this time were Christians, according to the information commissioner for Plateau, Gregory Yenlong, and a local human rights organization.

Many appeared to have been cut down with machetes after being driven from homes set ablaze by attackers in the predawn darkness, said Shamaki Gad Peter of the League for Human Rights, a Nigerian group.

Mr. Yenlong said the attackers were “hoodlums, Fulani herdsmen” — Muslims from a neighboring state, Bauchi, who were going after Christian members of Plateau’s leading ethnic group, the Berom, in the villages of Ratt and Dogo Nahawa.

“They attacked those villages and killed well over 300 people, mostly women, children and the aged,” Mr. Yenlong said. “They killed them unprovoked. Innocent people were massacred.”

Witnesses, including Mr. Peter, spoke of bodies littering the streets of Ratt. One victim was less than 3 months old, he said.

“I’m seeing more than 20 corpses right now, women and children who have been killed,” Mr. Peter said. “Virtually every house has been burned down. Corpses of people are littered about. They were slaughtered with machetes. I can see the cuts on their head and neck.”

Mr. Peter said the attacks began around 2 a.m. and lasted around four hours.

The attacks come at a time of political crisis in Nigeria. The acting president, Vice President Goodluck Jonathan, was appointed by the National Assembly to rule in the place of President Umaru Yar’Adua, who is gravely ill. Mr. Jonathan sent troops to Jos in January to quell the violence, but his authority in the country is uncertain.

Mr. Peter said security forces were scarce on Sunday. “There are two military personnel just hanging around,” he said.

One man who was present during the attacks said the killers began firing guns, then poured gasoline on the roofs in Ratt.

“We saw the Fulani coming, and they started shooting,” said the man, Yohanna Kudu. “They used machetes to kill our women and children. Some of the children were burned inside the houses.”

He added, “We thought the military would protect us.”

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NYTimes

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