"Reporting from Ratsat, Dogo Nahawa, Nigeria, and Lagos, Nigeria -- The victims of Sunday's sectarian massacres were buried in mass graves in central Nigeria on Monday as survivors told horrific stories of Christian villagers being trapped in nets and hacked to death by Muslim herdsmen.
Hundreds of nomadic Fulani herdsmen launched coordinated attacks on three Christian villages -- Dogo Nahawa, Ratsat and Zot, just south of Jos -- about 3 a.m. Sunday.
The killers planted nets and animal traps outside the huts of the villagers, mainly peasant farmers, fired weapons in the air, then attacked with machetes, according to human rights lawyer Shehu Sani of the nongovernment Civil Rights Congress, who visited the villages and interviewed dozens of survivors.
"People came out of their houses and started falling into the animal traps and mosquito nets and then they were hacked down," he said. "They were the kind of traps used for wild animals."
This year's attacks have had a more sinister pattern: They are carefully planned and brutal, with hundreds of villagers killed -- including babies, the elderly and anyone else unable to flee.
"Even the kind of violence is unusual, because it was not physical confrontations between Muslims and Christians. It was an ambush," said Sani, the rights lawyer. "The attackers killed whoever they caught. It was mostly women who stayed behind to defend their children that became most of the victims."
The villages of Ratsat and Dogo Nahawa were eerily silent Monday. Houses lay in ashes and the streets were deserted. Survivors loaded bodies on trucks for the mass burial in Dogo Nahawa."
LATimes
Hundreds of nomadic Fulani herdsmen launched coordinated attacks on three Christian villages -- Dogo Nahawa, Ratsat and Zot, just south of Jos -- about 3 a.m. Sunday.
The killers planted nets and animal traps outside the huts of the villagers, mainly peasant farmers, fired weapons in the air, then attacked with machetes, according to human rights lawyer Shehu Sani of the nongovernment Civil Rights Congress, who visited the villages and interviewed dozens of survivors.
"People came out of their houses and started falling into the animal traps and mosquito nets and then they were hacked down," he said. "They were the kind of traps used for wild animals."
This year's attacks have had a more sinister pattern: They are carefully planned and brutal, with hundreds of villagers killed -- including babies, the elderly and anyone else unable to flee.
"Even the kind of violence is unusual, because it was not physical confrontations between Muslims and Christians. It was an ambush," said Sani, the rights lawyer. "The attackers killed whoever they caught. It was mostly women who stayed behind to defend their children that became most of the victims."
The villages of Ratsat and Dogo Nahawa were eerily silent Monday. Houses lay in ashes and the streets were deserted. Survivors loaded bodies on trucks for the mass burial in Dogo Nahawa."
LATimes
For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders,
Matthew 15:19
