Nigeria.

Nigeria:

PRAYER ALERT: Nigerian Christians shot dead as more villages targeted.

Posted: 13th December 2024

With update from Pakistan

Two Christians were reportedly killed and others kidnapped, including a pastor, as militant Fulani herdsmen targeted villages in central Nigeria.

The herdsmen are understood to have attacked the communities on December 1 and the days leading up to it.

Please pray for all those affected by these incidents.

Barnabas Para was killed in Gwanje village, Akwanga county in Nasarawa state, on the first day of the month while he and neighbours sat in front of his house, said a local resident, Moses Bello.

‘At about 8pm I was resting in my house when I heard gunshots,’ Bello told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News (CDI-MSN) by telephone. ‘A neighbour ran into my house and said some armed herdsmen shot at them as they were in front of the house of our neighbour, Barnabas Para. When the attackers left, we went to the scene of the shooting and found Barnabas dead.’

The gunmen seized resident Okigwe Gajere but he escaped and managed to return home, Bello said.

That evening armed herdsmen killed a Christian and wounded another in Ntsakpe village, about 3km from Akwanga town along the Akwanga-Abuja highway, a resident identified only as ‘Francis’ said.

‘The gunmen attacked a neighbour’s house and killed a Christian by the name of Mr Sule,’ he said. Another Christian, Mr Zamani, was also shot and injured and is currently being treated in hospital.

In Goho village, a security aide to a former member of the National Assembly was reportedly shot dead in the kidnapping of Joseph Haruna Kigbu and his wife, also on December 1, as they were on their way to Jos, the Plateau state capital.

Three days earlier armed herdsmen attacked the predominantly Christian village of Ningo, kidnapping a pastor, Charles Joshua of Living Faith Church, and three other Christians, according to Bello. Release Int.