LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Viewers are gearing up to crown the first female winner of "American Idol" in six years, but the biggest drama at the once-dominant Fox TV singing contest is taking place backstage over which of the celebrity judges will be voted off.

Audiences for what was the most-watched TV show in the United States for eight years have slumped to new lows in the current 12th season, despite the addition of singers Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj and Keith Urban to the judging panel.

Veteran record producer Randy Jackson, the only member of the panel to have been with the show since it started in 2002, announced on Thursday that he was quitting after viewers vote for their winner next week.

Jackson's announcement came a day after entertainment website TheWrap reported that Carey, Minaj and Urban would not be asked back, along with the show's longtime executive producer, Nigel Lythgoe.

TheWrap.com said that Fox television was turning against paying huge salaries for big-name judges, only to see ratings fall.

Fox and production company FremantleMedia on Thursday declined to comment on the overhaul reported by TheWrap that have overshadowed the battle between singers Angie Miller, Candice Glover and Kree Harrison to reach the two-part finale.

Carey, one of the world's best-known recording artists, is getting a reported $17 million salary, with rapper Minaj pulling in about $12 million and country singer Urban around $7 million a year for their jobs on the contest.

Audiences for "American Idol" have fallen to around 12 million viewers per episode in recent months, compared to about 30 million during the show's heyday in 2006 and 2007.

The show is facing stiff competition from NBC rival "The Voice."

The report by TheWrap followed a story in The Hollywood Reporter last month that said producers had considered a mid-season replacement of Carey with Jennifer Lopez, who had quit the panel in 2012.

A Fox television spokeswoman termed that report "another ridiculous 'Idol' judge rumor."

DIVAS GRAB THE SPOTLIGHT

Minaj told "Idol" host Ryan Seacrest in a Thursday interview for his E! News show that she enjoyed being a judge. But she dodged the issue of whether she would be back.

"I feel happy here and I have to thank them for giving me this chance. They could have picked anyone in the world. And they picked me. So that's all I'll say about that," Minaj said.

Lyndsey Parker, managing editor of Yahoo! Music, said that Minaj had been met with a backlash from the core, middle-aged and family "Idol" audience, especially after reports last year of a feud between her and Carey.

"I think they were hoping she would bring in some kind of youthful audience but that doesn't appear to have happened," Parker told Reuters.

As for Carey, "she came to the panel with a lot more credibility than many others, but I don't think she is very good TV - a little bit low energy - and she rambles," Parker said.

The backstage drama comes in a strong season for women, with female singers dominating the final rounds for the first time in years.

On Thursday night, Seacrest will announce which contestants viewers have chosen to be in the finale in Los Angeles next Wednesday and Thursday.

Battling for the two spots are piano-playing pop singer Miller, 18, from Massachusetts; former travel agent turned powerhouse soul singer Glover, 23, from South Carolina; and 22-year-old country singer Harrison, from Texas, whose personal story and the loss of both her parents has won as many hearts as her voice.

Whoever is crowned the new "American Idol" will be the first female winner since Jordin Sparks in 2007.

Fox is a unit of NewsCorp.

(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; Editing by Xavier Briand)

TOKYO (Reuters) - Sharp Corp, Japan's leading maker of liquid crystal displays, will rely on expanding supplies of small panels to Samsung Electronics Co while still shipping screens to rival Apple Inc, in a bid to raise factory output levels and remain viable, three sources said.

In a midterm business plan it aims to release on Tuesday when it announces its latest earnings results, Sharp will set a goal of raising annual operating profit to $1.5 billion by March 2016 on revenue of $30 billion, the sources familiar with the plan told Reuters on condition they remained anonymous.

Japan's TV pioneer avoided failure last year with a $4 billion bailout from lenders including Mizuho Financial Group and Mitsubishi Financial Group. Sharp will borrow another 150 billion yen ($1.47 billion) to help it repay a 200 billion yen convertible bond due in September, the sources said.

Those banks will dispatch personnel to take up senior management positions at Sharp, including a financial officer, which will also reduce its number of directors by 12 people, the sources said.

Sharp in October had to mortgage its offices and factories in Japan, including the one that makes screens for the Apple iPad and iPhone. It also had to agree to trim its workforce by 10,000 people and seek buyers for overseas assets including TV assembly plants in China, Malaysia and Mexico.

Deepening its ties with Apple's South Korean competitor, Samsung Electronics, comes as growth at Apple slackens and orders for screens slow. Analysts project profit growth at the smartphone pioneer to average less than 5 percent for the next decade compared with an average of 60 percent over the past five years.

Sharp, which at the start of the year was forced to curtail production of 9.7-inch screens for Apple's iPad, began limited panel fabrication for Apple's next iPhone, with mass production slated to start in June, the sources said.

Samsung Electronics in March said it would inject $103 million into Sharp in return for a 3 percent stake in the Japanese company in a deal that secured it supplies of small LCD screens. Sharp, however, rejected a proposal by Samsung to buy its copier and printer business.

Sharp raised additional cash by agreeing in December to sell an equity stake to mobile chipmaker Qualcomm Inc, for $120 million. The two companies also agreed to cooperate in developing new screens based on Sharp's low power consumption IGZO panel technology.

The Japanese company will also try to expand sales of household appliances in Southeast Asia in a bid to underpin earnings over the next three years, the sources said.

Sharp will likely report a 500 billion yen net loss for the year ended March 31, sources earlier told Reuters, worse than the 450 billion yen deficit it forecast in November.

Its operating profit for the second half of its business year was 20 billion yen, compared with the company's forecast for 13.8 billion yen, the sources added.

Since the start of the year, Sharp's shares have gained 49 percent, closing 6.4 percent higher on Friday at 450 yen. That compares with a 41 percent rise in the benchmark Nikkei 225.

($1 = 101.7800 Japanese yen)

(Additional reporting by Taiga Uranaka; Writing by Tim Kelly; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

Rami-Abdul-Rahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Saturday rebels took over two army posts on the road near Aleppo after days of fighting.

The regime built the desert road as a backup route after rebels captured the town of Maaret al-Numan in October cutting the main highway between the country's two largest cities.

The Observatory also reported clashes in the town of Qusair, near the border with Lebanon.

The fighting in the town came a day after U.N. commissioner for human rights Navi Pillay expessed alarm over Qusair, which has been besieged by Syrian troops for several weeks.

Nearly 1,000 survivors and World War II vets joined with former President Bill Clinton and Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Holocaust activist Elie Wiesel to mark the museum's 20th anniversary. Organizers chose not to wait for the 25th milestone because many survivors and vets may not be alive in another five or 10 years.

"We felt it was important, while that generation is still with us in fairly substantial numbers, to bring them together," said Museum Director Sara Bloomfield.

Washington has many monuments and memorials that offer something special for visitors from around the world, Clinton told the crowd, "but the Holocaust memorial will be our conscience."

Since the museum opened, the world has made huge scientific discoveries, including the sequencing of the human genome, Clinton said.

"Every non age-related difference you can see in this room and across the globe, every single one is contained in one half of 1 percent of our genetic makeup ... but every one of us spends too much time on that half a percent," Clinton said. "That makes us vulnerable to the fever and the sickness that the Nazis gave to the Germans.

"And that sickness is very alive all across the world today."

The occasion marked a reunion of sorts for Clinton and Wiesel: Both were on hand to dedicate the museum at its 1993 opening. On Sunday night, the museum presented its highest honor to World War II veterans who helped end the Holocaust. Susan Eisenhower accepted the award on behalf of her grandfather, U.S. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, and all veterans of the era.

The federally funded museum also launched a campaign to raise $540 million by 2018 to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive and to combat anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial and contemporary genocide.

It has already secured gifts totaling $258.7 million in its quest to double the size of the museum's endowment by its 25th anniversary. Also, a $15 million gift from Holocaust survivors David and Fela Shapell will help build a new collections and conservation center.

Bloomfield said organizers wanted to show Holocaust survivors, veterans and rescuers that the effort will continue to honor the memory of 6 million murdered Jews, in part by working to prevent genocide in the future. For instance, a study released by the museum last month found the longer the Syrian conflict continues, the greater the danger that mass sectarian violence results in genocide.

The museum's theme for its 20th anniversary is "Never Again: What You Do Matters."

Vera Greenwood, who was born in Berlin and remembers seeing Hitler with Nazis marching in the street, said her father knew they had to leave when he was forced out of his job as a lawyer. She remembers Nazi officers coming to their house and taking her father's books.

"Though I was very young, I knew something was very wrong," said Greenwood, now 84. "I still feel we were very lucky to survive."

Her family moved to Palestine with a British visa and ended up fighting for Israel's independence. Greenwood lived in Israel for 30 years before immigrating to the U.S.

She and her husband, Fred, who survived the Holocaust in Holland as a child by being hidden and passed from house to house, wanted to be part of the last large reunion of survivors.

"In 10 more years, most of us will be gone," Greenwood said, noting the museum is a way to keep their stories alive.

Herman Zeitchik, 89, of Silver Spring, Md., was a young U.S. Army soldier when his unit landed at Normandy in the mission to liberate Europe. He remembers coming across the Dachau concentration camp unexpectedly in southern Germany.

"They never told us there was a concentration camp, but we smelled it," Zeitchik said. "We smelled the burning flesh."

Later during a patrol, Zeitchik saw people held within the camp's chain-link fence. "That's the first time I knew about the concentration camps," he said.

Dachau was the first regular Nazi concentration camp, established in 1933. The Americans liberated Dachau's prisoners in 1945.

The museum continues collecting objects, photographs and other evidence of the Holocaust from survivors, veterans and archives located as far away as China and Argentina. Curators expect the collection to double in size over the next decade.

This week, the museum is opening a special, long-term exhibit titled "Some Were Neighbors: Collaboration and Complicity During the Holocaust." It includes interviews with perpetrators never shown before.

Curator Susan Bachrach said the exhibit's research challenges the idea that the Holocaust was primarily about Hitler and Nazi leaders. Surveys at the museum show that's what most visitors believe.

"That's very comforting to people, because it puts distance between the visitors and who was involved," Bachrach said.

So, the museum set out to look at ordinary people complicit in the killing and persecution of millions of Jews through greed, peer pressure, a desire for career advancement or other factors beyond hatred or anti-Semitism. The exhibit includes images of bystanders looking on as Jews were led away.

Focusing only on fanatical Nazis would be a serious misunderstanding of the Holocaust, Bloomfield said.

"The Holocaust wouldn't have been possible, first of all, without enormous indifference throughout Germany and German-occupied Europe, but also thousands of people who were, say, just doing their jobs," she said, such as a tax official who collected special taxes levied against Jews.

Much more is still being learned about the Holocaust, Bloomfield noted.

The museum is compiling an encyclopedia of all incarceration sites throughout Europe. When the project began, scholars expected to list 10,000 such sites. Now the number stands at 42,000.

Since opening, the museum has received more than 35 million visitors.

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U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: http://www.ushmm.org

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Follow Brett Zongker on Twitter at https://twitter.com/DCArtBeat

A major genetic study has defined the nature of the relationship between a rare liver disease called primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The effort is the largest to study PSC to date.

Prior to the project, experts weren't sure whether PSC was a complication of IBD. The study found that while 70 percent of patients suffering from it also have IBD, , according to ScienceDaily.

PSC researchers hailed from 13 countries in Europe and North America. Their discovery paves the way for developing treatments to target pathways potentially involved in causing the liver disease.

PSC is anthat causes inflammatory swelling, scarring, and damage to bile ducts, PubMed Health reports. ScienceDaily says the illness affects only about 1 in 10,000 individuals, can lead to liver failure, and is the most common reason for liver transplants.

A specific cause has eluded researchers for years. The Mayo Clinic says that while PSC can develop at any age, itand is more common in men than in women. Even among patients with IBD, however, it's rare.

The two major types of IBD are Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. According to the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America, IBD affects around . The cause or causes of both illnesses remain unknown.

The PSC study collected a huge number of DNA samples. Scientists noted nine new genetic PSC-associated regions. They also took a closer look at three regions of the genome already linked to the liver illness. They realized it was a distinct disease when they found that just six of the 12 regions were also associated with IBD.

Use of a genotyping chip allowed scientists to see genetic differences between PSC and IBD, as well as similarities. They predict that as they collect more DNA, they will be able to pinpoint targets likely to respond to therapy.

Additional research showed 33 more genetic regions linked to other autoimmune illnesses. Those conditions included celiac disease, type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, and sarcoidosis, in addition to Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. Defining genetic relationships between PSC and those conditions could eventually lead to testing drugs known to be effective for those illnesses as therapies for the liver ailment.

I had not heard of PSC until I recently underwent tests to check out my gallbladder. After the radiologist's report noted some unusual liver findings, the possibility of primary sclerosing cholangitis came up.

The illness is a potential culprit due in part to the fact that I have Crohn's disease. While PSC is a sobering illness, the discovery that this rare liver disease is a distinct illness rather than a complication of IBD is somehow heartening as I search for the precise cause of my discomfort.

Vonda J. Sines has published thousands of print and online health and medical articles. She specializes in diseases and other conditions that affect the quality of life.

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Perhaps ironically cold in their matter-of-factness, those numbers tells the story of the state of the climate in a way that is tangible. It allows us to create a thermometer of sorts, like those used for fundraising at suburban middle schools — the goal being not to reach the line at its top. Earth Day is a similar sort of benchmark, a string tied around the finger of the country to remember to look at how we're doing. Here are the tools you need to make an assessment of the state of the Earth.

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Data resources: Theon climate

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Last month, the temperature of the world's land and oceans was . That alone seems innocuous. Here's another number: 337. For 337 straight months, the world has seen temperatures above the 20th century average. Meaning, , that anyone born after March 1985 — anyone 28 or younger — has never experienced a month during which global temperatures were below average for the century.

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Map via .

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That data comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's monthly "State of the Climate" recaps, which it does forand . Each month, the reports outline the raw data: the XXth hottest month, YY degrees above the 20th century average. While the report includes broader trends in the warming, they tend to be a bit buried.

Which is whymade a bit of a splash: it suggested that global warming was actually happening more slowly than scientists expected. It didn't take long for reason to be offered. It wasn't because humans were producing less greenhouse gasses. Instead, , eruptions of which emitted particles that helped diffuse sunlight in the stratosphere.

Global temperatures are never uniformly distributed, as the map above shows. If it's hot in Australia, that doesn't mean it will be here. According to the NOAA, March 2013 was tied for the tenth-hottest March in recorded history globally, matching March 2006. But afterin 2012, temperatures during March in the United States werefor the month.

Map via .

The surprising cold the United States experienced was primarily due to an , a shift in pressure patterns that moves Arctic air south. The NOAA notes that the oscillation index provided "the most negative value on record for March."

Data resources: The , .

But there's some thinking that the Arctic ice melt played a role, too. , but the key point: while "still not settled science," three recent studies suggest that dropping ice levels also lead to colder weather.

The level of ice in the Arctic always fluctuates. From its peak, usually in March, the amount of ice melts until it reaches its minimum extent, usually in September. Last year, the amount of ice at its lowest point .

Graph via .

If scientists confirm a link between that melt and colder Springs, expect more Marches like the one we just experienced.

There are other implications to the ice melt, of course. Cargo ships can now , cutting shipment times between Asia and Europe. Last year, a major general in the U.S. Northern Command suggested that North America would soon : the shoreline on northern Canada.

Data resources: The . The Department of Energy'stracks energy use and production.

Even as the United States , the amount of carbon dioxide it creates — the most abundant type of greenhouse gas — has dropped. This is in part due to the slower economy since 2009, in part to , and in part due to— a transition spurred by low natural gas costs due, in part to fracking.

Graph via .

The most recent set of annual data from the EPA . That year, two-thirds of the country's emissions came from power plants, thanks in large part to old coal-burning plants that are old enough to have been .

But there are two big question marks in the data. The first goes back to fracking — the process of injecting fluid into shale rock to break it apart, releasing methane gas. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, . And it's not clear how much of that methane .

Other violence Wednesday killed 13.

The unrest is heightening Sunni-Shiite tensions and raising fears that the country could be headed toward a new round of all-out sectarian violence.

Wednesday's fighting broke out after tribesmen blocked roads leading to the Sunni town of Qara Tappah, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) northeast of Baghdad.

Iraqi troops arrived to try to clear the city. Fierce clashes erupted, and helicopters fired at the gunmen. Police say 15 gunmen and seven soldiers were killed.

In other violence, three gunmen were killed when they attacked a security checkpoint near the former al-Qaida stronghold of Mosul, about 360 kilometers (225 miles) northwest of Baghdad.

Later, a car bomb struck a police patrol north of Baghdad, killing a policeman and two civilians, according to police.

After sunset, a car bomb near a bus stop in Baghdad's mostly Shiite neighborhood of Husseiniyah killed seven people and wounded 23 others.

Hospital officials confirmed the casualty figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information to reporters.

The fighting came a day after security forces stormed a Sunni protest camp in the town of Hawija, sparking deadly clashes and a spate of other attacks, mostly targeting Sunni mosques, that killed at least 56 people.

The Tuesday raid in Hawija drew harsh condemnations from Sunni leaders and foreign diplomats, raising fears that Iraq is being pushed back toward all-out sectarian fighting like the underlying conflicts in the civil war in neighboring Syria.

Human Rights Watch on Wednesday urged Iraqi authorities to ensure that any investigation into the Hawija killings takes into account allegations that security forces used excessive force. The rights group noted that there have been reports that security forces attacked demonstrators without provocation.

Iraq's Defense Ministry said it entered the protest area to try to make arrests over an attack on a nearby checkpoint several days earlier, and its forces came under heavy fire from several types of weapons, as well as snipers.

Tuesday's bloodshed followed four months of largely peaceful protests staged by Iraq's Sunni minority against the Shiite-led government.

Iraqi Sunnis say they face discrimination, particularly in the application of a tough anti-terrorism law that they believe unfairly targets them. The government frequently carries out arrests in Sunni areas on charges of al-Qaida or ties to the deposed Baathist regime of dictator Saddam Hussein.

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AP writer Adam Schreck contributed.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court justices on Monday signaled reluctance to issue too broad a ruling about patents on human genes, and some indicated they might seek a compromise distinguishing between types of genetic material.

The biotechnology industry has warned that an expansive ruling against Myriad Genetics Inc could threaten billions of dollars of investment.

In weighing the question of whether any human genes can ever be patented - meaning the holders have exclusive rights to their intellectual property for a defined period - the nine justices asked tough questions about isolated genes that Myriad holds patents for.

But the justices also appeared to be inclined to draw a line between synthetically produced genetic material and natural genes.

A court ruling along those lines, suggested by the Obama administration, would have less impact on Myriad. Some of the latest research using human genes involves a synthetic form of DNA called recombinant DNA, or rDNA.

Shares of Myriad were up $1.43 or 5.4 percent at $27.53 on midday trading on the Nasdaq. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index was down 1 percent.

The Myriad patents in dispute will all expire by 2015. A ruling is due by the end of June this year.

In probing the limits of what can be patented, the justices cited a wide range of products in raising hypothetical questions, including chocolate-chip cookies and baseball bats.

A group of medical researchers, associations and patients say human genes, including synthetically produced material, should not be patented. They sued in 2009, challenging seven patents owned by or licensed to Myriad on two human genes linked to breast and ovarian cancer. A federal judge said the patents were invalid. An appeals court overruled that decision, and the case landed at the Supreme Court.

Under the federal Patent Act, an inventor can obtain a patent on various new processes and products but "laws of nature, natural phenomena and abstract ideas" are not patentable. The broad legal question is whether the genes Myriad patented, called BRCA1 and BRCA2, are a product of nature. The appeals court said they were not.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted patents on at least 4,000 human genes to companies, universities and others that have discovered and decoded them.

CHOCOLATE CHIPS AND BASEBALL BATS

Lawyers from both sides and the Obama administration probed the limits of what can be patented. Justices cited examples of more familiar products, including chocolate-chip cookies and baseball bats.

It was Sotomayor who brought up the chocolate-chip cookies, wondering whether if it was possible to get a patent on an isolated human gene, it would be possible to do the same for salt, eggs and other cookie ingredients.

Separately, both Justice Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts seized upon the suggestion made by Myriad lawyer Gregory Castanias that a baseball bat doesn't exist until it's isolated from the tree.

Roberts said a baseball bat was "quite different" because "you have to invent it" and not just "cut it off" from the tree.

Alito raised an even more extreme hypothetical question by asking whether a baseball bat that was naturally crafted after a piece of wood was tossed about in the ocean before washing up on shore could then be patented.

Several of the justices also ruminated at length on another colorful hypothetical question, also offered by Alito, concerning under what circumstances a company could claim a patent on material from a plant found in the Amazon jungle that can help treat cancer.

Others on the bench, such as Justice Elena Kagan, indicated concerns about the impact a broad ruling could have on companies that invest in such research.

"Why shouldn't we worry that Myriad or companies like it will just say, 'well, you know, we're not going to do this work anymore'?" she asked Christopher Hansen, the lawyer representing the challengers.

Alito appeared most concerned about the court issuing a sweeping ruling on what he described as a "very difficult" question.

"Why should we do that?" he asked.

POSSIBLE COMPROMISE?

Hansen sought to defuse concerns among the justices that he was asking for too broad a ruling. He said he was not asking for patents on rDNA to be invalidated, something industry groups had raised concerns about.

"Recombinant DNA is in fact what all the major innovations in the industry are doing these days," he said. "There is nothing in our position that would prevent recombinant DNA from being patented."

The Obama administration, which intervened in the case in support of neither side, has urged a compromise position, which several justices probed during the hour-long argument.

Government lawyers say that "synthesized genetic materials" can be patented because they are human-made inventions. But simply removing, or isolating, human DNA does not substantively change it and so it should not be eligible for a patent, the administration says.

If the court were to adopt that approach, which neither the plaintiffs nor Myriad accept, some of Myriad's patents, concerning synthetic molecules called cDNA, could survive, although the parties disagree on that point as well.

A majority appeared inclined to find that cDNA could be patented.

Emphasizing a need to tread carefully, Justice Stephen Breyer noted that patent law often involves "uneasy compromises."

Justice Anthony Kennedy asked Castanias directly whether a ruling based on the government position would give industry "sufficient protection" relating to innovation and research.

"I can't tell you for a certainty whether it would hurt the industry," Castanias said.

The case is Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 12-398.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Howard Goller, John Wallace and Sofina Mirza-Reid)

The fighting in Baga began Friday and lasted for hours, sending people fleeing into the arid scrublands surrounding the community on Lake Chad. By Sunday, when government officials finally felt safe enough to see the destruction, homes, businesses and vehicles were burned throughout the area.

The assault marks a significant escalation in the long-running insurgency Nigeria faces in its predominantly Muslim north, with Boko Haram extremists mounting a coordinated assault on soldiers using military-grade weaponry. The killings also mark one of the deadliest incidents ever involving Boko Haram.

Authorities had found and buried at least 185 bodies as of Sunday afternoon, said Lawan Kole, a local government official in Baga. He spoke haltingly to Borno state Gov. Kashim Shettima in the Kanuri language of Nigeria's northeast, surrounded by still-frightened villagers.

Officials could not offer a breakdown of civilian casualties versus those of soldiers and extremist fighters. Many of the bodies had been burned beyond recognition in fires that razed whole sections of the town, residents said. Those killed were buried as soon as possible, following local Muslim tradition.

Brig. Gen. Austin Edokpaye, also on the visit, did not dispute the casualty figures. Edokpaye said Boko Haram extremists used heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades in the assault, which began after soldiers surrounded a mosque they believed housed members of the radical Islamic extremist network Boko Haram. Extremists earlier had killed a military officer, the general said.

Edokpaye said extremists used civilians as human shields during the fighting implying that soldiers opened fire in neighborhoods where they knew civilians lived.

"When we reinforced and returned to the scene the terrorists came out with heavy firepower, including (rocket-propelled grenades), which usually has a conflagration effect," the general said.

However, local residents who spoke to an Associated Press journalist who accompanied the state officials said soldiers purposefully set the fires during the attack. Violence by security forces in the northeast targeting civilians has been widely documented by journalists and human rights activists. A similar raid in Maiduguri, Borno state's capital, in October after extremists killed a military officer saw soldiers kill at least 30 civilians and set fires across a neighborhood.

Sunday afternoon, the burned bodies of cattle and goats still filled the streets in Baga. Bullet holes marred burned buildings. Fearful residents of the town had begun packing to leave with their remaining family members before nightfall, despite Shettima trying to convince some to stay.

"Everyone has been in the bush since Friday night; we started returning back to town because the governor came to town today," grocer Bashir Isa said. "To get food to eat in the town now is a problem because even the markets are burnt. We are still picking corpses of women and children in the bush and creeks."

The Islamic insurgency in Nigeria grew out of a 2009 riot led by Boko Haram members in Maiduguri that ended in a military and police crackdown that killed some 700 people. The group's leader died in police custody in an apparent execution. From 2010 on, Islamic extremists have engaged in hit-and-run shootings and suicide bombings, attacks that have killed at least 1,548 people before Friday's attack, according to an AP count.

In January 2012, Boko Haram launched a coordinated attack in Kano, northern Nigeria's largest city, that killed at least 185 people as well. However, casualty numbers remain murky in Nigeria, where security and government officials often downplay figures.

Boko Haram, which means "Western education is sacrilege" in the Hausa language of Nigeria's north, has said it wants its imprisoned members freed and Nigeria to adopt strict Shariah law across the multiethnic nation of more than 160 million people. While the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan has started a committee to look at the idea of offering an amnesty deal to extremist fighters, Boko Haram's leader Abubakar Shekau has dismissed the idea out of hand in messages.

The Boko Haram network, which analysts and diplomats say has loose links to two other al-Qaida-aligned groups in Africa, has splintered into other groups as well. Its command-and-control structure also remains unclear. Recent Internet videos featuring Shekau have shown him with fighters carrying military weapons he said were stolen during attacks on Nigeria's military. Those weapons have included rocket-propelled grenades and other heavy weapons.

Fighters suspected to belong to Boko Haram also have been seen in northern Mali, where heavily armed Islamic extremists took power in the weeks following a military coup in that West African nation. Analysts also have worried that Boko Haram may get its hands on weapons smuggled out of Libya following its recent civil war.

Despite the deployment of more soldiers and police to northern Nigeria, the nation's weak central government has been unable to stop the killings. Meanwhile, violent atrocities committed by security forces against the local civilian population only fuels rage in the region.

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Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Lagos, Nigeria, contributed to this report.