According to a Nigerian government official, the Insurgent Group Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) is accused of carrying out a massacre at a Catholic church last week that killed scores of people.
“We have been able to see the footprint of ISWAP in the horrendous attack in Owo and we are after them. Our security agencies are on their trail and we will bring them to justice,” Interior Minister Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola said on Wednesday June, 9 as reported by Reuters.
Gunmen opened fire on Catholic worshipers at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Owo, Ondo State, in southwestern Nigeria, during Pentecost celebrations on June 5.
According to initial estimates, more than 50 people were murdered, including children, and many more were injured. According to Reuters, the official dead toll from the incident is now at 40, with 61 injured persons still in hospitals.
ISWAP is thought to be a splinter group from Boko Haram, another Islamic extremist terrorist organisation that has slaughtered thousands of Christians and displaced millions in Nigeria and surrounding countries in recent years.
In 2015, the leader of ISWAP declared allegiance to ISIS.
In recent years, ISWAP has claimed to have conducted public killings of Christians and boasted about it on its online platform. However, the Pentecost attack took place in Ondo State, which is far from ISWAP’s regular operating area in the north of the country.
Following the most recent incident, Pope Francis affirmed his “spiritual closeness” to Nigerian Catholics, saying in a telegram that he was praying “for the conversion of those blinded by hatred and violence.”
Nigeria has more Christians slain for their faith than any other country in the world, with at least 4,650 dead in 2021 and nearly 900 in the first three months of 2022. Christian leaders and advocates continue to emphasize and record the violent continuous persecution of Christians in Africa’s most populous country, frequently at the hands of their Muslim neighbors. Some relief organizations and professionals are even putting together evidence that the killings of Christians in Nigeria are genocide.
The country was removed off the US State Department’s list of nations with the most egregious religious freedom violations in late 2021 without explanation.