Nigeria, church shooting during mass: dead and wounded

They hit the church crowded with faithful during the Pentecost mass. Bursts of gunfire, then a roar. Screams and a desperate run away. What remains is shown by gruesome images: bodies poured into pools of blood, including children.

Owo, a town 350 kilometers from Lagos, is shocked. “This is too much. Here we have never seen anything so terrible, ”reacted the local deputy, Ogunmolasuyi Oluwole, after visiting the church and being rescued from the nearby hospital. He too confirmed that there are victims among the children.

The terror came when the service was about to end, he said, “Father Andrew Abayomi, one of the priests of St. Francis Catholic Church: «We were about to conclude the service. I even asked people to start leaving, it was at that moment that we began to hear the shots coming from different parts, “said the cleric. “We hid inside the church, we locked ourselves in the church for 20 minutes. When we realized they were gone, we opened the church and took the victims to the hospital. ”

No official toll of the massacre so far, but doctors’ reports speak of at least fifty deaths. “Several faithful arrived here lifeless,” a doctor from the center told Reuters.

“I was passing by when I heard a loud explosion and gunshots in the church,” said a witness who reported seeing “at least five armed men inside the church” before fleeing for safety.
They attacked with firearms and explosives, state police spokesman Ibukun Odunlami confirmed to AFP.

The BBC reports of a priest and some faithful kidnapped. A local MP representing the Owo area in the national parliament also reported that a priest who was celebrating mass was taken, hostage. But the diocese of Ondo, the Nigerian state where Owo is located, denies it: “All the priests and the bishop of the parish are safe and no one was kidnapped, “reads a statement.

«Our heart is heavy» tweeted the governor Rotimi Akeredolu, a native of Owo – our peace and tranquility have been attacked by the enemies of the people ».

No certainty so far as to who the attackers are, but the first suspicions are concentrated on the Fulani shepherds who from the North are pushing further and further south of the country in search of new transhumance routes to the detriment of Yorub farmers. A particularly heated conflict in the central belt of Nigeria, where there was a 43% increase in mass atrocities in 2020 compared to 2019, more than terrorist ones.

The local socio-political organization also points the finger at the Fulani”Afenifere”, which represents the interests of the Yoruba: it was a direct attack against Governor Rotimi Akeredolu for his unwavering support for security in the Yoruba land “and, among other things, for” compliance with the law on open pasture ” declared Secretary Apagun Kole Omololu. “The terrorists, mostly Fulani foreigners, should be caught and killed by the security forces,” he added, according to the Nigerian website “Punch”.

“While focusing on the conquest of territories for their cattle breeding, Fulani shepherds too often become protagonists of assaults on villages inhabited mainly by Christians” reacted Alessandro Monteduro, director of “Aid to the Church in Need», Underlining that Nigeria is currently the epicenter, together with the sub-Saharan area of ​​Africa, of the persecution against Christians. “Unfortunately, all this – continues Monteduro – is taking place with the objective complicity of the country’s institutions, which despite repeated appeals and requests from the Nigerian Catholic Church and many supranational realities of the world, do not act against these terrorists and criminals”.

The Nigerian army, in difficulty, is engaged on several fronts to try to stem the insecurity in the country: from the jihadist insurgency in the Northeast to the bands of looters and kidnappers who terrorize the Northwest and the center.

Words of condemnation came from Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari,in the last year of a mandate marked by harsh criticism precisely for its ineffectiveness in the fight against terrorism and insecurity. “Only souls from the underworld could conceive and carry out such a cruel act,” he said.

Emotion and dismay from Nigeria to Italy. Pope Francis, upon hearing the news, addressed a prayer “for the victims and for the country, painfully affected in a moment of celebration”. The Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Luigi Di Maio, in a tweet: «An unprecedented violence, firm condemnation for what happened. A prayer for the victims, we cling to the pain of their families ». And the secretary of the Democratic Party, Enrico Letta: “The helplessness we all feel right now is equal to the anger at this blind, barbaric and unjustified violence.”