The attack almost mirrored the tactics used by those who carried out similar massacres in Christian villages last week when more than 200 people were slaughtered.
Under the cover of darkness and a driving rain, raiders with machetes entered the village of Byie early Wednesday, setting fire to homes and firing gunshots into the air to drive frightened villagers into the night, witness Linus Vwi said.
Vwi said he and about 20 neighbors rushed into the surrounding wilderness, cowering in bushes as they listened to screams.
He said the attackers spoke Fulani, a language used mostly by Muslim cattle herders in the region. Officials and witnesses blamed Fulani herders for the killings last week.
Fulani community leader Sale Bayari denied that Fulanis took part in those killings, though he said the community suffered a similar massacre recently.
Six people were wounded in the overnight raid and taken to a local hospital, said Mark Lipdo, leader of a regional Christian nonprofit group. He said attackers burned down 15 homes during the violence.
The dead included seven women, four children and one man, Lipdo said. Attackers removed the tongues of most of the victims, witnesses said.
It was unclear why attackers took the victims' tongues. In Nigeria, killers sometimes take body parts of their victims for black magic or "juju" rituals, later using them as charms.
Internet Video: Muslims- the solution is Jihad in the cause of Allah
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP via NY Times) -- A video posted on a militant Web site calls for Muslims in Nigeria to use ''the sword and the spear'' to rise up against Christians in Africa's most populous nation, according to a translation released Tuesday by a U.S. group that monitors militant sites.
The video on the Ansar al-Mujahideen forum, a Web site sympathetic to al-Qaida, comes in the wake of a series of religious massacres and riots in central Nigeria.
The video shows television news footage and graphic images of those killed as a narrator tells viewers ''the solution is jihad in the cause of Allah,'' according to a translation provided by the SITE Intelligence Group.
''Negotiations, dialogues and protests will not stop the advancement of the enemies and their massacres,'' the narrator says. ''Nothing will stop them but the sword and the spear.''
