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Nigeria: Islamic jihadists of Boko Haram murder at least 57 Christians

Jun 3, 2014 6:12 pm By Robert Spencer

boko-haramNow that it has been revealed that Nigerian generals have been arming this bloodthirsty group, it is clearer why they have been able to operate with such impunity in Nigeria, and continue to do so. But neither the mainstream media nor the leaders of the great nations of the West dare to consider the implications of the fact that this group’s supposed twisting and hijacking of Islam is shared by people at high levels of the Nigerian government.

“Scores Dead from Attacks on Church, Christian Areas in Northeast Nigeria,” Morning Star News, June 3, 2014:

JOS, Nigeria (Morning Star News) – Suspected Boko Haram Islamists killed nine Christians guarding a church service in Borno state on Sunday (June 1), hours before a bombing of a Christian area in neighboring Adamawa state resulted in at least 48 deaths, Christian leaders said.

In Borno, at least 10 gunmen attacked a Church of the Brethren in Nigeria (Ekklesiyar Yan’uwa a Nigeria or EYN) congregation during worship in Attagara village, near Gwoza town on northeastern Nigeria’s border with Cameroon, they said. The gunmen killed nine EYN members volunteering as a security team, area Christian leaders told Morning Star News, and a local witness reportedly said area men mobilized, killed four of the Boko Haram attackers and arrested three others.

One area Christian leader said the attackers were a small part of 200 assailants who have invaded Attagara and other predominantly Christian villages around Gwoza the past two weeks, destroying homes and churches.

“Our church in Attagara was attacked also on Sunday,” said Dr. Rebecca Dali, adding that church members there and in surrounding villages sent distress calls to her husband, Samuel Dali, who is president of the EYN. “There have been 24-hour-a-day attacks on Christian communities of Attagara, Hawul, and Gwoshe around the Gwoza mountains.”

She said her husband made efforts to contact military officers in the Borno capital of Maiduguri but received no positive response.

“My husband eventually contacted the presidency in Abuja, and a military helicopter was sent to the area to contain the attack on these Christian villages,” Dali said. “Reports we received from the area show that the soldiers drafted there to repel attackers could not get to the villages on claims that they did not receive orders from their command headquarters in Maiduguri to fight the insurgents.”

Recent attacks on Attagara, Gwoshe, Hawul, and other Gwoza villages have resulted in the destruction of 36 church buildings in the area, Dali said. “The Boko Haram Islamists have destroyed 36 churches in Gwoza area, including that of Attagara attacked on Sunday,” she said. “We now have only two churches that have not been affected.”

Paul Gadzama, a native of Borno state who is director of Relief, Empowerment And Development Missions (READ Missions), said the attacks on the Attagara EYN church and other villages in Gwoza are part of a strategy to eliminate Christians.

“Boko Haram gunmen have continued to attack these areas inhabited by Christians with the sole aim of pushing them out to enable establish an Islamic country,” Gadzama told Morning Star News in Jos. “So far they have taken over so many villages, forcing our people to flee to Cameroon.”

Titus Pona, chairman of the Borno state chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria, told Nigeria’s Vanguard newspaper that the Gwoza area is more than 80 percent Christian. The Nigerian Army is reportedly ill-equipped and/or unwilling to thwart terrorist attacks, and Pona reportedly said that after many Christians were killed during the attacks of the last two weeks, villagers trying to defend themselves killed 37 Boko Haram rebels on Sunday (June 1).

Explosion in Adamawa

Suspected members of Boko Haram on Sunday (June 1) also bombed a predominantly Christian area in Mubi, Adamawa state, with casualties higher than official figures, according to area Christians.

Explosives detonated at 6 p.m. in the Kabang area of Mubi, in northeastern Nigeria, killed and wounded patrons at a bar for viewing televised soccer as well as people at a nearby soccer game, said Dali, a resident of Mubi.

“There were some of our church members who were in the vicinity of the bomb attack, and they said at least 48 persons were killed in the attack,” she said. “Those who died are mostly Christians. Some Christian youths were also playing soccer near the bombed area, and they were affected by the bombing.”

Other witnesses reportedly said at least 45 people died in the blast, which also damaged several shops.

EYN is headquartered in Mubi.

“Our church, EYN, lost two of her members in the bomb attack, and they are one John, a member of the New Life for All Gospel Team [evangelistic outreach] in the church, and Miss Godiya John, a member of the Girls Fellowship in the church,” Dali told Morning Star News. “As I speak to you now [11 a.m. Monday, June 2], their funeral service is going on in the church.”

The government figure for those killed was 18, according to Director of Defense Information Maj.-Gen. Chris Olukolade. Initially he reportedly made reference to the bomb exploding at a soccer field, but at a press conference with other security officials on Monday (June 2) he referred to it as an explosion at the TV-viewing bar as he advised soccer fans to be vigilant during the upcoming World Cup. Olukolade reportedly said 19 people were wounded from the blast, though witnesses said dozens were injured.

Near the site of the explosion is the headquarters of the Special Operations Battalion of the Nigerian Army that is trying to counteract Boko Haram violence, though soldiers are reportedly advised not to frequent the bar after 4 p.m. It was not clear at press time how many of the victims were soldiers.

Witnesses reportedly said explosives were hidden in a pair of three-wheeled vehicles outside the bar. The military’s Olukolade reportedly said two suspects were arrested, but that one of them later died in a hospital from injuries sustained in the attack.

Adamawa Gov. Murtala Nyako described the bomb attack as “barbaric, repugnant and unacceptable.”

Mubi and surrounding areas have been under attack by Boko Haram Islamists fighting to impose sharia (Islamic law) throughout Nigeria; the rebels seek more strict enforcement of sharia in the country’s northern states, where it is already in place applicable to the region’s Muslim population.

In the recent attacks, five members of the EYN church were killed in Saminaka village, near Mubi, while nine other church members were killed in nearby Njilang village, Dali said.

“In these attacks, houses of our church members were destroyed, and they were displaced, as many of them were forced out of their villages,” she said.

Boko Haram (“Western education is a sin”), the name residents of Maiduguri, Borno state originally gave the group that calls itself, “The Congregation of the People of Tradition for Proselytism and Jihad” (from the Arabic, Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad,), has killed thousands of civilians since 2009.

The Nigerian government declared a military state of emergency in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe in northeastern Nigeria on May 14, 2013. Nigeria outlawed Boko Haram on June 4, declaring their activities illegal and “acts of terrorism,” and the U.S. State Department designated the group as a terrorist organization on Nov. 13.

With some members of the Nigerian group coming from Cameroon, Chad and Niger, Boko Haram has grown into a heavily armed militia with ties to Al Qaeda. The State Department’s 2012 Terrorism report ranked it the second deadliest terrorist group worldwide, after the Taliban….

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Filed Under: Muslim persecution of Christians, Nigeria Tagged With: featured


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Comments

  1. dumbledoresarmy says

    Jun 3, 2014 at 7:15 pm

    From the article: “Suspected Boko Haram Islamists killed nine Christians guarding a church service in Borno state on Sunday (June 1)”.

    “…at least 10 [Muslim – dda] gunmen attacked a Church of the Brethren in Nigeria (Ekklesiyar Yan’uwa a Nigeria or EYN) congregation during worship in Attagara village, near Gwoza town on northeastern Nigeria’s border with Cameroon, they said.

    “The gunmen killed nine EYN members volunteering as a security team, area Christian leaders told Morning Star News, and a local witness reportedly said **area men mobilized, killed four of the Boko Haram attackers and arrested three others** {my emphasis – dda}.”

    Deepest condolences to the families of the nine brave Nigerian Christian men who were killed in the line of duty, guarding their church; and commendation to the *others* who instead of buckling after their guards were killed, instead went out and *fought back* and got rid of no less than four murderous jihadi mohammedan mobsters. Unfortunately, the other three murderous mohammedan mobsters who were captured but not killed will probably get away, given the extent to which the regional government, police and military in northern/ northeast Nigeria are controlled by Muslims.

  2. King Dave says

    Jun 3, 2014 at 7:53 pm

    It is not possible to thwart Boko Haram’s murder campaign.
    Because it is impossible to tell the difference between moderate and militant Muslims in Northern Nigeria and of course elsewhere. When militants are killed in defense of the state, to the liberal media they merely become wedding guests and victims

  3. Salah says

    Jun 4, 2014 at 1:38 am

    “..villagers trying to defend themselves killed 37 Boko Haram rebels on Sunday”

    That’s the ONLY way to deal with these vermins. Don’t EVER count on the Nigerian forces. Christians must learn how and when NOT to turn the other cheek.

    Emat Gladium (Luke 22:36)

    http://crossmuslims.blogspot.ca/2013/07/ann-barnhardt-jesus-guns.html

  4. Michael Copeland says

    Jun 4, 2014 at 3:49 am

    That’s their Jihad. What’s yours?

    The significantly Arabic name “The Congregation of the People of Tradition for Proselytism and Jihad” (Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad,) is too long for the media, who prefer “Boko Haram”, the local nickname. It would be legitimate and informative, when using the nickname, to expand it slightly: “Congregation of the People” could be paraphrased “Group”, while “Jihad” is already in their title.

    We could carefully always say “Boko Haram Jihad Group”.

  5. Owen Morgan says

    Jun 4, 2014 at 5:27 pm

    I am afraid that it comes as no surprise that the Nigerian armed forces are implicated in boko haram atrocities. Nigeria is a Christian-majority country, in which the army is disproportionately muslim. The military has a long tradition of overthrowing elected governments and the capital was moved from mainly Christian Lagos, on the southern coast, to largely muslim Abuja, in the interior; Lagos remains far and away Nigeria’s biggest city.

  6. Dr Nath Duru-Obisi says

    Jun 4, 2014 at 6:17 pm

    Really sad to learn of the complicity of those upon who war is being waged in providing springboard opportunities to it defeat. The war was not Against President Goodluck Jonathan but against Nigerian nation represented by its military that ought to owe allegiance to the nation as opposed to sectional interest or religious persuasions.
    But on the part of the President, the legislatures and the Judiciary there is a role to be played to bring down the spectre of uprising. The role is to fully evoke the rule of law. The role is to enact a new laws to be immediately generated by the legislature stuffed with as many clauses as possible to make it offence punishable by public execution on any one , group, however highly placed who participates, aids and abet Boko Harm in any guise now and eventually upon the liquidation of the uprising and stories gathered about who did what to sustain , promote , conceive the threat.
    It has to be a constitutional solution. When a highly place person is fairly tried and if found guilty and be exposed to public execution and his properties distributed to the destitute, learns will be learn. Nigerians will learn to cease to quit the embracing international community who admire Nigerian growth and emergence to political and economic emancipation

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