Nigeria: deux personnes tuées dans une église pendant une messe retransmise en direct
Gunmen killed two people Tuesday night in an attack on a church in western Nigeria during a live-streamed mass, sparking outrage on social media.
This attack occurred as US President Donald Trump threatened military intervention in Nigeria over allegations that the country's Christians were being massacred. Abuja denies these allegations but claims to be in talks with the US government regarding security cooperation.
In the small church of Ekuru, located in Kwara State, several armed men burst in on Tuesday around 6 p.m., interrupting worshippers who had come to pray.
The attack was filmed by a church security camera that was recording the service. The video, which sparked outrage on social media where it was shared, shows about twenty worshippers interrupting their prayers at the sound of gunshots coming from outside the church. Children's cries can be heard.
Then we see an armed man chasing worshippers hiding behind curtains and furniture in the church while several others steal bags and personal belongings left on the church pews, while the shooting continues.
"The police, in collaboration with security guards, quickly responded to the gunfire coming from the outskirts of the city, which prompted the criminals to flee into the bush," explained the Kwara State police in a statement released overnight.
"After a thorough search of the area, a man, Mr. Aderemi, was found fatally wounded by a gunshot inside the Apostolic Church of Christ, in Oke Isegun, while another man, Mr. Tunde Asaba Ajayi, the victim of a fatal gunshot, was found in the bush," the police detailed, adding that a third man had been shot and taken to the hospital.
The governor of Kwara State, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, "has requested that additional security reinforcements be deployed as a matter of urgency," the governor's office said in a statement Wednesday morning.
Recently, bandit attacks have increased in Kwara, including kidnappings for ransom, prompting Nigerian President Bola Tinubu to order the deployment of military personnel in October to the state's forests, where gangs establish camps and hide.
In Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, divided between a predominantly Muslim north and a largely Christian south, attacks by criminals on places of worship are common, not for religious reasons but because armed gangs called "bandits" loot the property of the faithful there.
The "bandits" roam the northern half of the country, looting villages, killing their inhabitants or kidnapping them for ransom. Churches and mosques are regularly targeted.
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