Hafsat Garba wept as she recounted how heavily armed Christian militiamen, stripped to the waist and wearing charms on their arms, invaded her home town.
The 36-year-old mother of two was one of hundreds of Muslim women abducted by the warriors during a two-day assault on the central Nigerian town of Yelwa in which hundreds were killed.
"At the town center, they separated women and children from the men," Hafsat said, trembling uncontrollably as she sat at a military checkpoint near the town. "They killed our men and took the women and children away."
The attack on Yelwa 225 miles east of the capital Abuja, was the latest fighting between Christian tribes and the Muslim Hausa-Fulani people which first broke out in 2001 when about 1,000 people were killed in the Plateau state capital of Jos.
At least another 1,000 have been killed in the last three months in small towns and villages across the southern part of Plateau state.
The conflict is rooted in competing claims over land, property and political rights, as well as religion.
The Tarok and other predominantly Christian indigenous tribes say the semi-nomadic Fulani are foreign to the area and that their large herds of cattle destroy crops. The Fulani say they have been grazing their livestock there for centuries.
Pointing to her swollen feet, Hasfat said she had trekked for several miles back toward her home after being held for three days in captivity.
She did not know if her husband had survived and was afraid of returning to Yelwa in case there was more fighting.
Charred corpses still lay in the streets days after the attack as riot police battled with looters.
At what used to be Yelwa's main market district, young men gathered round a grilled meat vendor near a military checkpoint, the only sign of commerce in the once flourishing little market town.
Muslims in Yelwa had been dreading a reprisal attack since February when a crowd of Islamic militants killed more than 100 Christians in the town, including 48 massacred in a church which was set on fire.
Many in Yelwa believe the last straw was when two Christians were killed by Muslims in the nearby village of Kawo.
"No Muslim could go to Kawo. If you stopped your vehicle there, they smashed your windshield. Even when you were driving past the village you could hear them threatening that they would overrun Yelwa someday," said Ozero Yunusa, whose left leg was fractured by a bullet during the fighting.
Witnesses said troops, sent to Yelwa after the February violence, took flight as soon as the Christian militia attacked it.
"The soldiers said they were going to get reinforcements, but they never came back. The mobile (riot) policemen also ran away," Yunusa told Reuters.
Hashim Mohammed said they tried to repel the attack, but their stones, bows and arrows were no match for their assailants who were armed with automatic rifles, including machine guns.
"The attackers retreated around 7.30 p.m. on Sunday, but promised to return," said Mohammed, who was shot in the leg. "The attack was more intensive on Monday when we were overwhelmed and boxed in at the town square where they just slaughtered us like sheep."
A policeman said many Muslims who survived the massacre had hidden in the basement of the town's main mosque, which was razed.
Abdullahi Abdullahi, a Yelwa community leader said 630 bodies had been buried in mass graves after the massacre, a figure that could not be independently verified.
A senior policeman spoke of hundreds killed.
Religious violence has killed at least 5,000 in Nigeria in the last four years.