RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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"If you ran into a room, they set the room on fire," says Fatima, describing a recent attack on her village in Zamfara, north-western Nigeria. "If you came out and started running, they shot you."
The gunmen, who struck at 02:00, split into groups to surround residents: one at the village entrance, one in the centre and one at the back.
"They opened fire without a care in the world, shooting indiscriminately," the 55-year-old quietly tells the BBC World Service.
It was one of many attacks that have caused havoc in the mainly Muslim community where residents live in fear of being kidnapped for ransom.
Fatima explains how the raids unfold: "You could have 100 motorcycles, and each one could be carrying three people."
About 70 people, including children, were killed from the village of Bia Buki in June, according to Fatima.
She describes how the attackers also targeted villagers as they fled and children were injured falling into ditches. Among the dead were her husband and six of his seven siblings.
Fatima is one of an estimated 800,000 Nigerians who the UN says have been displaced in the country's north-west. One of the main reasons people have left their homes is violence.
Some attacks have been carried out by militant Islamist groups, but the majority in this region are by gangs, locally referred to as bandits, who often move around on motorcycles and attack quickly then ride away, escaping before security forces arrive.
Thousands of people have joined government-backed vigilante groups to fight, and the BBC spoke to one who said his armed group had killed many bandits.
But the gangs keep attacking in what appears to be a deteriorating pattern of violence and abductions that is spreading southwards.
Fatima says when the bandits attacked her home, she ran into the nearby forest with other villagers to hide: "The forest became our sanctuary. We ran with our kids, if you couldn't find your child you'd take your neighbour's child."
She says people slept in the forest before moving on to the state capital, Gusau, "where we found a little bit of peace".
Fatima now lives in an informal camp in Gusau with her seven children, who are aged between nine and 30.
Dozens of women sit in groups on the dusty ground of the makeshift compound, many wearing brightly coloured hijabs. More than 1,000 people are here, she believes.
Conditions are tough with "no proper place to even lay your head". Food is scarce and assistance arrives irregularly.
Fatima describes two occasions where "good Samaritans" brought rice or potatoes. Children are sent out to gather firewood to sell so families can buy food, but 22 have been kidnapped by bandits, she says.
Gesturing towards a nearby building, Fatima says that there "you will find 100 or more women… maybe just two or three have had breakfast.
"When we had peace, we had our own wealth, but now the tables have turned and we have become beggars."
Her eyes fill with tears and she cries for a few minutes, wiping her face with her hands.
Despite being 16 miles (25km) from her village, the threat Fatima fled has not disappeared.
When she first arrived at the camp, the sound of gunshots kept her awake at night. Things have since quietened, she says, crediting patrols by the army and government-backed vigilantes, but the atmosphere is still tense.
The bandits are mostly people from the Fulani ethnic group, who traditionally make their living by raising animals. Some of them have swapped cattle trading for kidnapping and extortion, which is seen as a faster, easier way to make money.
They attack towns and villages or ambush travellers, abducting people for ransom, stealing whatever they want - and sometimes killing those who resist. They also force communities to pay protection money, only allowing farmers into their fields if they hand over large sums of cash.
Attacks are now more frequent than ever. In the bandit heartlands of north-west Nigeria, the number of incidents recorded by the international conflict monitoring group Acled rose 78% in the first half of this year compared to the same period last year.
Data from Nigeria's National Human Rights Commission shows that the number of kidnappings across the country doubled over the same period.
Malik Samuel at Good Governance Africa, a research and advocacy non-profit group, says that "there is no region in northern Nigeria currently that does not experience one form of mass abduction or the other".
Nigeria's battle with bandits is just one part of a more complex security situation facing the country.
As well as the bandit gangs in the north-west, there is an Islamist insurgency in the north-east, separatist unrest in the south-east and clashes in central regions, where the main grievance is over access to land and water for grazing and farming and where ethnic and religious elements have also fuelled some of the unrest.
Most analysts agree that armed groups have waged campaigns of violence that affect all communities, regardless of background or belief.
The kidnap gangs, jihadists and separatists wreaking havoc in Nigeria
At the time the group forced its captives into sexual slavery, domestic servitude or used them as suicide bombers.
But a range of groups across Nigeria now use kidnapping to raise funds, focusing on soft targets such as schools, churches, mosques and remote villages.
This was mainly confined to the Boko Haram strongholds of the north-east or the bandit zones of the north-west - areas that are largely Muslim.
Then, in May this year, gunmen on motorcycles attacked three schools in Oyo state, south-west Nigeria, one of the few regions that was previously considered relatively safe. Thirty-nine children, the youngest just two years old, were abducted along with seven teachers. One teacher was killed during the raid, another's murder was filmed and shared online.
After 56 days, the remaining 44 hostages were released. The government said it refused to pay a ransom and that ...
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