They were chanting ‘Kill, kill, kill’

There was total silence, apart from birdsong, when we entered the village of Kuru Karama. Every building had been burnt or destroyed. There were no villagers in sight, just two or three soldiers at a guard post dozing in the late afternoon sun.

At length we found a group of young men and women. Did they live here? Yes. Had they been here on the day of the massacre? No, they knew nothing. Were they Christian or Muslim? Christian. They bent their heads and one woman placed her hand over her mouth.

Finally we came across Abdullah. He took us to a little square and pointed out some of the wells into which the Christian killers had thrown scores of dead bodies, head downwards. Some of the bodies were so decomposed that they could not be removed. The stench of death seeped out of the wells.

Abdullah pointed to a sewage pit, now covered with concrete blocks. He told us that the attackers had thrown in 30 children, between six months and three years old. This pit was now their unmarked grave. All around were burnt patches on the ground, in the shape of human bodies, where the attackers had hacked down their victims, poured fuel on them, and set them alight.

Abdullah had been away in town on the day of the attack and returned later to discover that he had lost 13 family members, including his wife. He broke down as he told us how, when he helped pull her body out of a well, he saw that her face had been mutilated and he could only recognise her by her clothes.

Later, talking to survivors, all of whom had fled to neighbouring towns and villages, we pieced together much of what had happened. At 8.30 a.m. rumours circulated of an impending assault.