Gunmen kill dozens in Nigerian church attack

Masked attackers walked into a Pentecost service in Ondo state spraying bullets and detonating explosives

Ondo State governor Rotimi Akeredolu, third from left, inspects the scene of the attack. Picture: AFP

Gunmen killed dozens of worshippers including children in a shooting at a Sunday church service in southwestern Nigeria, in the latest example of spiralling religious violence in Africa’s most populous nation.

Masked attackers walked into a Pentecost service at the St Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Ondo state spraying bullets and detonating explosives. There was no official estimate of the death toll, but some local politicians said it could be higher than 50.

Nigerian television channels showed footage of some bloodied survivors streaming from the church, while others called for emergency blood donations to help the wounded. Adelegbe ­Timileyin, who represents the area in Nigeria’s lower legislative chamber, said attackers abducted the presiding priest.

President Muhammadu Buhari condemned the attack as heinous, while the Ondo state Catholic Church said the attack had left the community devastated.

Judith Anthony, a journalist from the nearby town of Afuze, said her father, who had been in the congregation, was in the hospital surrounded by local bishops after being shot multiple times. “Everybody around him died,” she said after speaking to him by telephone. “The gunmen shot sporadically, and there was just blood and dead worshippers.”

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the ­attack and the motive was unclear, but Nigeria has suffered an uptick of violence in recent months. Attacks and kidnappings by Islamic extremists and armed gangs that have blighted the country’s northern states for years are spreading further south. In particular, violent clashes are flaring over dwindling supplies of farmland between mainly Christian farming communities and mainly Muslim herdsmen who have for centuries lived in relative harmony.

Ondo, about 500km from the commercial capital Lagos, is widely known as one of Nigeria’s most peaceful states. Sunday’s attack shows how security forces are struggling to prevent the ­violence spreading across the country.

Odulani Fumilayo, police spokesperson in Ondo state, said local authorities, reinforced by federal police, were hunting the perpetrators: “We have taken the dead bodies to the morgue while those who sustained injuries were taken to the hospital for treatment. We can not ascertain the number of dead or injured persons now; but the investigation is on to ascertain the cause of the incident.”

Last week, the head of Nigeria’s Methodist Church was abducted in the southeast, along with two other clerics. They were freed after a $US240,000 ransom was paid to their captors. A week earlier, two Catholic priests were kidnapped in the northern state of Katsina, home to Mr ­Buhari. They are yet to be freed.

The Vatican said the Pope was praying for the victims who had been “painfully stricken in a moment of celebration”.

The Wall Street Journal