(CNN) Daniel Bala was walking home from church early on Friday evening. He had just attended choir practise and was looking forward to getting home to his wife and newborn baby who was just two days old.
Suddenly, gunshots rang out and Bala, 49, was forced to take cover in a nearby yam farm, where he hid behind a ridge from the attackers, suspected militia herdsmen who had previously targeted farming communities like theirs in the region, according to local government officials.
It was the second assault on the community in as many days.
Elias Manza, chairman of the Zango Kataf local government area in Kaduna state, told CNN that the region had been targeted by militants in at least three separate attacks across the last month, killing at least 27 people.
“The shots came in from four different locations,” Bala recalled of the incident which happened in the Zikpak village, a semi-urban agrarian village in southern Kaduna, Nigeria.
“Everybody in the community was running to the farms and forest. I saw two of the shooters, they wore black all over,” Bala, a farmer told CNN.
Bala’s wife, who had delivered a baby just two days earlier, ran into the forest with the baby to keep safe, he said.
