JOS, Nigeria (Reuters) – Nigeria’s acting president  yesterday ordered the security forces to hunt down those behind  clashes involving Muslim herders and Christian villagers in  which more than 300 people may have been killed.

The latest unrest in Nigeria’s central Plateau state comes  at a difficult time, with acting leader Goodluck Jonathan trying  to assert his authority while ailing President Umaru Yar’Adua  remains too sick to govern the oil-producing nation.

Villagers in Dogo Nahawa, just south of the state capital  Jos, said Hausa-Fulani herders from surrounding hills attacked  at about 3 am (0200 GMT), shooting into the air before cutting  those who came out of their homes with machetes.

A Red Cross official said at least two other nearby  communities were also targetted, in an area close to where  sectarian clashes killed hundreds of people in January, but that  it was too early to give an overall death toll.

A Reuters witness counted more than 120 bodies — most lying  in Dogo Nahawa, others taken to mortuaries in Jos — but Plateau  State Commissioner for Information Gregory Yenlong said more  than 300 people, including women and children, had died.

Jonathan put the security forces on red alert to try to  prevent reprisal attacks spreading into neighbouring states.

“Reports reaching us indicated marauding bands launched a  flurry of attacks on certain communities in the state, causing  considerable death and injury,” Jonathan’s office said.

“The Acting President … has directed that the security  services undertake strategic initiatives to confront and defeat  these roving bands of killers,” it said in a statement.

Some of the bodies seen by the Reuters witness — including  those of women and children — were charred, others had machete  wounds across their faces. Aid workers said some had been shot.

“The shooting was just meant to bring people from their  houses and then when people came out they started cutting them  with machetes,” said Dogo Nahawa resident Peter Jang, women  crying behind him.

Four days of sectarian clashes in January between mobs armed  with guns, knives and machetes killed hundreds of people in Jos,  which lies at the crossroads of Nigeria’s Muslim north and  predominantly Christian south.

Jonathan deployed hundreds of troops and police to quell  January’s unrest, in which community leaders put the death toll  at more than 400. Official police figures estimated the death  toll from the clashes two months ago at 326.

Yenlong said the state government may consider extending a  dusk-to-dawn curfew still in place after January’s unrest.

It was not immediately clear what triggered the latest  unrest, but thousands have died in religious and ethnic violence  in central Nigeria over the past 10 years.