video transcript

Residents of northern Nigeria's Dogo Dawa village wash blood from their prayer mats after armed bandits killed 22 people on Sunday. Most were shot dead as they left prayers inside this local mosque, but two were killed in their homes. Imam, Mallam Abdullahi, said the gunmen entered the mosque and announced the attack was a reprisal against a local vigilante group, before opening fire on the worshippers. Police said it was a revenge attack by the armed gang because four of its members had been arrested by vigilantes in the village and taken to the police. Bature Alhaji, who is the head of one of the vigilante groups in the village, said he pursued the gunmen and shot at them. Two of the gunmen were killed. Armed robberies and local disputes degenerating into deadly shootouts are increasingly common across Nigeria's impoverished north. The village also lies close to the country's volatile "Middle Belt", where Nigeria's mostly Muslim north and largely Christian south meet, and where tensions over land and ethnicity often erupt into violence.