A special Nigerian human rights panel began investigating Reuters reports that the army massacred children and ran a secret abortion programme when fighting Islamist insurgents and said it would refer for prosecution those it considered guilty of rights violations. The Nigerian military has denied the reports and said it would not carry out an investigation because they were not true. Anthony Ojukwu, executive secretary of the government-appointed National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), publicly launched the seven-member investigation panel led by a retired Supreme Court judge in Abuja. Ojukwu said the investigations followed "allegations of gross human rights violations contained in the three-part…