Gunmen fired on Catholics celebrating Mass in a usually peaceful part of the country. There was no claim of responsibility and the motive was unclear.
Dozens were believed to be dead after assailants attacked a Catholic church in southwestern Nigeria on Sunday, firing on worshipers as they celebrated Mass, according to local officials. The attack at the St. Francis Catholic Church in Owo, in Ondo State, was the deadliest attack on a church in Nigeria in years, and brought the kind of violence usually seen in the country’s north to a relatively peaceful area of Africa’s most populous nation. The attack occurred on Pentecost Sunday as dozens of worshipers were gathered at the church. At least four assailants stormed the building, according to the police. It was the first time that a church had been attacked in the Ondo state in recent years, bringing a new sense of insecurity to a state that had been spared the levels of violence seen elsewhere in Nigeria. President Muhammadu Buhari, who has promised to end Nigeria’s insecurity, condemned the attack as a “dastardly act.”
As of Sunday night, there had been no claim of responsibility and the motive for the massacre was unclear. Most attacks on churches have been in the north, but they have become less frequent than they were at the height of the Boko Haram insurgency around 2015. In the southwest, where the church attack took place on Sunday, there have been kidnappings, most often by herdsmen seeking ransom, and there have been conflicts with herdsmen over new restrictions on open grazing.
