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Two infants are among more than 20 worshippers killed in an attack on a church in southwest Nigeria.
Around 50 wounded people are still being treated in hospital following the attack at the St Francis Catholic Church in Owo town in Ondo state, said Kadiri Olanrewaju, head of Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Services in Ondo.
The exact number of those killed is unknown as some of the dead were taken away by family members for private burials, said residents.
“It is only those at the hospital morgue that I am giving you, not the ones in the church taken home for burial. I don’t have that record,” Olanrewaju said.
Ogunmolasuyi Oluwole and Adelegbe Timileyin, who represents Owo at the state and federal legislative houses, told AP earlier that more than 50 were killed in the attack.
In a statement released yesterday, the Ondo State Catholic Diocese told AP that 38 including 5 children died in the attack.
The police said attackers “sneaked into” the church premises. Some of them were “disguised as congregants. Other armed men who had positioned themselves around the church premises fired into the church,” the police added.
The attack happened just as the Pentecost Mass was ending, survivors said.
“There was no warning, no threat, this place has been peaceful,” said Sunday Adewale, who works in the palace of the local chief. “They just looked for people’s soft spot when people are relaxed.”
A papal telegram was sent to Bishop Jude Ayodeji Arogundade of Ondo by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin on behalf of Pope Francis.
It said: “His Holiness Pope Francis was deeply saddened to learn of the horrific attack at St Francis Church in Owo, and he assures you and all those affected by this act of unspeakable violence of his spiritual closeness.”
The New Zealand Catholic bishops, Sunday, issued a statement of solidarity with the victims of the massacre and support the message sent by Pope Francis to Bishop Jude Ayodeji Arogundade and the faithful of Ondo Diocese.
They also note and affirm the comments by the National President of the Catholic Laity Council of Nigeria, Sir Henry Yunkwap, that ordinary Nigerians are tired of words from their political leaders and want action, including the urgent arrest and prosecution of the perpetrators of this evil act.
Nigeria has grappled for more than a decade with an insurgency in the northeast by the Islamic extremist rebels of Boko Haram and its offshoot the Islamic State West Africa Province.
Nigeria’s Catholic bishops lamented that nowhere is safe in Africa’s most populous country, home to 206 million people.
Archbishop Lucius Ugorji, president of the Nigerian Catholic bishops’ conference, released a statement from the bishops saying he was shocked and dismayed to learn of the attack.
“Nowhere seems to be safe again in our country; not even the sacred precincts of a church,” said Archbishop Ugorji, who is preparing to be installed as the leader of the Archdiocese of Owerri.
“We condemn in the strongest terms the spilling of innocent blood in the house of God. The criminals responsible for such a sacrilegious and barbaric act demonstrate their lack of the sense of the sacred and the fear of the God,” he said.
The archbishop called on the government to quickly find the gunmen, saying that if they were not taken into custody and prosecuted, he feared the country would descend into anarchy.
“The world is watching us. Above all, God is also watching us,” he added.
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News category: World.
