WASHINGTON—Quantifying horror is challenging enough under any circumstance. It is especially difficult in that corner of Nigeria that many now have taken to calling The Other Islamic State.

But even as the world seizes upon loop-upon-repeated-loop reporting the wholesale massacre of as many as 2,000 people by the ruthless Islamist fighters of Boko Haram in and around the northeast Nigerian town of Baga, Amnesty International now is cautiously downscaling the estimates.

“We are clearly in the hundreds,” Amnesty International’s lead Nigeria researcher, Daniel Eyre, told the Star on Monday, adding that the 2,000 figure — an ominous data point of death that many stories attribute to Amnesty itself — actually came from a local Nigerian government official cited by the BBC.

The original BBC report — published last Thursday, just as western media began converging on Paris — did indeed attribute death in the thousands to Nigerian official Musa Alhaji Bukar, who described Baga as “virtually non-existent.”

The BBC’s key line: “While (Bukar) raised fears that some 2,000 had been killed in the raids, other reporters put the number in the hundreds.” Amnesty International borrowed the number the following day in a press release, which included several caveats, including “possible,” “as many as” “if true” and “possible.” The thrust of Amnesty’s message is that it was looking to learn details as quickly as possible.

Four days later, some detail now is emerging, suggesting that the slaughter may not be as extensive as first feared.

Eyre has spoken directly with multiple survivors and eyewitnesses and now is less confident that the attacks that began on the early morning of Jan. 3 add up to the deadliest in Boko Haram’s history.

Some early reports described the slaughter as indiscriminate, sparing neither children nor the elderly. Eyre, however, told the Star he spoke directly with an elderly survivor who remained in Baga for several days and, when he finally emerged, was able to pass freely, unhindered by those who ravaged the town.

“He’s an elderly man and Boko Haram tend not to be so concerned with older people,” said Eyre. “What he told me is that Boko Haram went house to house in the town, pulling out young men of fighting age and shooting them in the streets. By the time the shooting was finished, by around 5 p.m., he said the streets were full of dead bodies.”

Other survivors told Eyre of residents fleeing and being chased down and shot in the surrounding bush on the outskirts of Baga. Thousands more fled, some making their way to Chad.

Despite the uncertainty over the extent of the killings, the carnage was of a multiplicity many times worse than the deaths of 17 in Paris. Was it 10 times worse? One hundred times worse? It will take time — possibly much more time — to ever really know.

Eyre is now gathering satellite imagery to “get a better sense of the destruction of Baga and surrounding towns.”

He added, “Once the people who have been displaced by the violence find accommodation and settle down, we’ll get a better idea.”

Unlike Syria, where extensive social media activity has lifted multiple layers of doubt over day-to-day violence, northeast Nigeria remains for the most part a technological dead zone. Some video has trickled out, raising serious questions of human rights violations not only by Boko Haram but also by the Nigerian military.

Facebook, in particular, teemed with fury over the weekend, contrasting the blanket coverage of the Paris attacks with scant attention to Nigeria. Amnesty’s Eyre declined to comment on widespread comparison. Understandable, since most of the anger fixed upon the estimate of 2,000 dead as the fulcrum for hypocrisy.

“We do acknowledge the difficulties of getting timely information out of northeast Nigeria,” said Eyre.

“But we certainly would welcome more media attention, not only to the war crimes of Boko Haram, but also the Nigerian military. We’ve seen on occasion the Nigerian government promise to investigate but then not follow up on those promises. There is an important role for media and civil society to play in holding the government accountable for its prosecution of the war.”

Whatever the numbers killed in the first week of January, observers see it as part and parcel of a larger, deadlier pattern that saw Boko Haram expand its hold over 20 towns in northeast Nigeria in the past six months. In total, Amnesty estimates some 4,000 people were killed in 2014, the vast majority of them civilians.

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The violence is changing not only in intensity but also with unprecedented tactics. One especially shocking new twist emerged on the weekend, with the New York Times reporting a girl as young as 10 ignited a concealed suicide belt in a crowded market, killing up to 20 people and wounding scores more.

But the challenge of ascertaining a death toll, said Eyre, remains as difficult than ever.

“With Boko Haram now in control of 20 towns in the northeast, I don’t think it will be until the end of the conflict — whenever that might be or whatever that will look like — that we’ll really be able to assess the numbers of people that have tragically lost their lives to this violence,” Eyre said.

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