DOGO NAHAWA, Nigeria— The attackers came at night and surrounded this small farming village, firing shots in the air to scare residents from their homes. Men, women and children were hacked with machetes as they rushed out. Several houses were set on fire with residents still inside.

Details are beginning to emerge from attacks Sunday on four villages in central Nigeria, where witnesses say members of the predominantly Muslim Fulani ethnic group targeted villages that were home to members of the mostly Christian Berom ethnic group. On Monday, local officials counted 378 bodies in the villages of Dogo Nahawa, Rasat, Zot and Shen.

The dead, in a freshly dug mass grave, included a pregnant woman and at least one infant. A few miles away in Jos, a city of a half-million at the crossroads of Nigeria’s Muslim north and predominantly Christian south, troops patrolled the outskirts and set up checkpoints. There was a light police presence in Dogo Nahawa.

“I was sleeping at night next to my husband when I heard shooting,” said villager Nomi Dung, 38 years old, her eyes red. “My husband told us to run, but I said, ‘No I will not run—even if I die, let me die in my home.’ My husband ran, and entered into the [attackers'] hands. My children ran outside because they were afraid from the shooting.”

Ms. Dung could not finish. A relative said her three children, ages 8, 5 and 3, had been killed.

The latest violence compounds the political uncertainties in Africa’s most-populous nation. With sub-Saharan Africa’s largest Muslim population, Nigeria has largely avoided extremist ideology. But the threat of a deepening religious divide adds to security problems and a leadership vacuum that have prompted worries that one of the world’s largest oil-producers could be careening out of control.

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Nation’s Elite Are Among Those Facing a One-Week Deadline to Repay Loans, or Risk Arrest, Freezing of Assets

LAGOS, Nigeria — Nigeria’s rich and powerful, long accustomed to a lifestyle of yachts, fancy cars, and businesses fueled by unchecked credit lines, have been put on notice.

Nigeria’s central bank on Wednesday made the unprecedented move of publishing a list of what it says are the major debtors to five banks rescued in a $2.6 billion bailout, among them some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in Nigeria. Hours later, the country’s top anticorruption unit, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, said the debtors had one week to repay their loans or risk arrest and seizure of their assets.

The list of more than 200 companies, individuals and government bodies includes Nigeria’s only two billionaires; Nigerian Stock Exchange officials; energy and hospitality conglomerate Transnational Corporation of Nigeria PLC; the former governor of Nigeria’s richest state; and the Ministry of Finance.

The Ministry of Finance, among others, couldn’t be reached to comment.

“It has become necessary to use this medium to request the following defaulting customers of the affected banks to pay without further delay their indebtedness, failing which the banks will take all appropriate legal actions to ensure repayment,” the central bank said in a statement on its Web site.

“They have just one week to bring in their checks or drafts to us or we begin their arrest and prosecution as well as confiscation of their assets because they are people of enormous means,” EFCC head Farida Waziri said in a statement.

As Death Toll Passes 800, Questions Raised About Whether Group, Boko Haram, Poses Broader Threat

By WILL CONNORS

LAGOS, Nigeria — A week of brutal violence in northern Nigeria has spurred questions over whether an obscure homegrown religious fundamentalist group represents a broader threat to national security in Africa’s most populous nation.

More than 800 people were killed last week during fighting between an Islamic fundamentalist group calling itself Boko Haram, and Nigerian security forces. The clashes spread across several northern states.

A Red Cross worker in the northern city of Maiduguri, where most of the fighting occurred, said that 780 bodies had been collected in the past few days, and that at least 3,600 Maiduguri residents had been displaced. Officials in Bauchi, where the violence began, had earlier confirmed more than 50 deaths.

Rights groups say many civilians were among those killed, though exact figures remain unknown. Police say most of the dead were militants.

More than 10,000 people have been killed in sectarian violence in Nigeria since 1999, often in the so-called Middle Belt, where the predominantly Muslim north meets the Christian south.

But Boko Haram’s targeting of its own government, attacking police stations and other official buildings, surprised many observers. Some northern Nigerians, who were aware of previous incidents involving the group, say the government should have seen this coming.

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ABUJA, Nigeria — An Islamic fundamentalist group in northern Nigeria expanded its attacks into three additional states on Monday, a day after at least 50 people died during fighting between the group and security forces in Bauchi State, aid workers and police said.

On Monday, fundamentalist group Boko Haram, which means “education is prohibited” in Hausa, launched attacks in three northern states, where at least 100 bodies were counted by a reporter in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, the BBC reported. Casualty figures couldn’t be confirmed.

Fighting was also reported in Kano and Yobe states. Police spokesmen didn’t respond Monday to requests for information.

Boko Haram on Sunday attacked a police station in the northern city of Bauchi after several of the group’s leaders were arrested last week. Police responded to Sunday’s attacks by converging on several of the group’s hideouts, killing at least 50 members and arresting more than 100, police spokesmen said.

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By WILL CONNORS

ABUJA, Nigeria — At least 100 suspects have been arrested following clashes Sunday in northern Nigeria between security forces and armed Islamic fundamentalists that left dozens dead, according to news reports and a police spokesman.

Exact casualty figures weren’t known. Police reported that all the dead were militants.

“A group of religious fundamentalists who believe that anything related to Western education is completely prohibited attacked a police station in Bauchi this morning,” Bauchi police spokesman Mohamed Barau told The Wall Street Journal.

He said the attackers used bows and arrows, locally made grenades, guns, knives and sticks. Security forces tracked the men to a residence and “upon arriving there the men opened fire, and the police, in self-defense, returned fire and shot some of them,” Mr. Barau said.

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WARRI, Nigeria — U.S. oil major Chevron Corp. shut down 100,000 barrels a day of Nigerian crude-oil production Monday after an attack on one of its pipelines, as fighting between Nigeria’s military and militant groups in the southern delta region entered a second week.

Nigeria’s main militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, took credit for the attack, which occurred in the Abiteye area of Delta state. It claimed that it had also attacked four other pipelines leading to Chevron’s oil tank farm in the region.

Monday’s incident marks the first major retaliation from MEND since a sustained offensive by the Nigerian military’s Joint Task Force began 10 days ago.

“We will continue our cat and mouse tactics with [the Nigerian military] until oil export ceases completely,” MEND said in an emailed statement.

Chevron confirmed the attack on Abiteye and the halt in production but didn’t comment on the other pipelines alleged to have been targeted. The incident is being investigated by the relevant stakeholders, a Chevron spokesman said in a statement.

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Part 3 of 5 of my series for Slate

LAGOS, Nigeria—Leo Igwe is a lonely man. In this overwhelmingly religious country, he is a rare creature. Leo is a proud, “out,” practicing atheist.

This is no small feat in a country where people answer the question, “How are you?” with, “I thank God.” Leo’s outspokenness has made him well-known but largely disliked in his home town on the northern outskirts of Lagos. It has also put his life in danger.

“I get death threats all the time,” Leo told me when I first met him several months ago. “What can I do? I believe what I believe.”

Death threats over religious matters are taken seriously in Nigeria, a country with a long and troubled history of religious violence. Particularly in the country’s “middle belt,” between its predominantly Muslim north and mostly Christian south, religious violence is easily triggered and dangerously volatile.

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A very interesting piece in the LA Times about Nigerian gangsters who’ve begun muscling into the Italian underground, much to the chagrin of the Italian mob - and innocent African immigrants who get mistaken for gangsters and are caught in the crossfire.

The killings in September, recounted in interviews by senior antimafia officials, were gory evidence of conflict between the Neapolitan mafia, known as the Camorra, and Nigerian gangsters who play a growing role in Italy’s drug and prostitution rackets.

Nigerian gangsters have made Castel Volturno a European headquarters. In the 1990s, demand boomed here for African prostitutes — prosecutors call it “the Naomi Campbell phenomenon.” Camorra clans “rented” turf to Nigerian pimps, a line of work that Neapolitan gangsters disdain.

“The Camorra worked well with the Nigerians at first,” said Antonio Laudati, a top Justice Ministry official who led a major prosecution of the Nigerian mafia last year. “They were low-cost labor. They were well-received because they were cheap and very loyal. But then the Nigerians started to rise to a new level.”