At least 50 people were killed and others injured Sunday when gunmen attacked worshippers at a Catholic church in southwestern Nigeria, according to media reports.
A doctor at a hospital in Owo, a town in the Nigerian state of Ondo, told Reuters that no fewer than 50 bodies had been moved to the Federal Medical Center in Owo and to St. Louis Catholic Hospital.
The attack took place during a Pentecost Sunday service at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Owo, according to Ondo’s governor, Arakunrin Akeredolu.
A video posted on Twitter showed graphic scenes of bodies and blood inside the church. Akeredolu said many children were among the dead.
Nina Shea, a human rights lawyer and expert in religious freedom at the Hudson Institute, a think tank and research center in Washington, D.C., told CNA Sunday that “war-like” attacks against Catholics and other Christians are escalating in Nigeria. Yet most of this violence, until now, has centered in northern Nigeria, while the southwestern part of the country where Sunday’s attack took place has remained relatively peaceful.
