THE fight against the Islamist terrorists of Boko Haram in Nigeria’s north-eastern corner has reached its bloodiest point so far. Once again the army is being criticised as much as the terrorists. On March 14th a military counter-attack after an attempted jailbreak by suspected members of Boko Haram left around 500 people dead, according to hospital sources, mostly at the hands of soldiers. It was the worst day of casualties since the sect’s terrorist campaign began in 2009. The facts of the massacre are disputed. The army says that on March 14th Boko Haram carried out a daylight raid on the heavily fortified Giwa barracks in Maiduguri, capital of Bornu state, in a bid to free hundreds of their comrades who had been detained there. The raid was “foiled” with “heavy human casualty on the terrorists”, says a military spokesman. But Maiduguri residents tell a different story. The army, they say, used the raid as a pretext to wipe out hundreds of young men detained in Giwa barracks. Fleeing inmates, most of whom had not been brought to trial, were shot down by troops firing from the ground and from helicopters circling above the barracks.

The army’s behaviour in Giwa had previously been sharply criticised by human-rights groups and by witnesses who had been held there. Before the events of March 14th, large numbers of young men (and some women) had been indiscriminately rounded up, held in inhumane conditions and tortured, they said. After the shooting, many were left to die of their wounds. The army denies the accusations.

What is clear is that Boko Haram has been running rings around the army since President Goodluck Jonathan intensified counter-insurgency efforts a year ago. Several security sources have accused military officials of colluding with rebel factions. For its part, the sect has become more brutal, targeting civilians as it wrests swathes of the rural north-east from the army. More than 1,500 people have been killed so far this year, making it the insurgency’s bloodiest spell. Since last May, some 350,000 people have fled their homes, says the UN.

Some in the president’s security team realise that the insurgency cannot be defeated by military means alone, and are trying something new. “It’s a stick-and-carrot approach,” says Sambo Dasuki, Nigeria’s national-security adviser. “We believe we can win the war against terror by mobilising our family, cultural, religious and national values.”

The government, says Mr Dasuki, will seek to enroll repentant Boko Haram members into vocational schools; psychologists will provide counselling; and local imams will give them a pacifist interpretation of the Koran. “Part of our approach is to offer an alternative narrative to those who have joined the ranks of this group,” says Dr Fatima Akilu, a psychologist who is designing a programme to rehabilitate Boko Haram members awaiting trial and to dissuade others from joining the rebels.

Well-intentioned as it is, the hearts-and-minds campaign may be too late. President Jonathan, a southern Christian, is widely mistrusted in the Muslim north-east, whose people often feel as hostile to the overzealous army as they do to Boko Haram. Mr Dasuki may find it hard to apply his more emollient approach at a time when the fighting is growing fiercer and the army’s heavy-handed tactics continue to encourage disgruntled youths to join or back the terrorists.

The president is said also to have given the go-ahead for secret negotiations with factions of Boko Haram. But previous such talks have been thwarted by the generals, some of whom are likely to benefit financially from the $6 billion now being allocated from the federal budget for security. A peace deal was at an advanced stage in June last year, says a frustrated negotiator. But the government apparently reneged, instead hunting down some of the people it had been talking to.

More recently, some Boko Haram people have again been sounding out mediators with suggestions that—among other ideas—the wives and children of fallen fighters be given vocational training, that destroyed villages be rebuilt, and that surrendering fighters be guaranteed safety. “If we get some core members to sign,” says the previously mentioned negotiator, “the rest will fall behind them like a house of cards.” But if massacres such as the one at Giwa barracks recur, such hopes for peace are almost certain to be dashed.