Ten killed in attack on Catholic Church in Nigeria *Boko Haram threatens to kidnap Christian women in Nigeria

Nigeria, March 12, 2012: The blast damaged the church’s roof, blew out its windows and destroyed a portion of the fence surrounding it.

Ten people were killed after a suicide bomber attacked a Catholic Church during a Sunday Mass in a central Nigerian city.

The attacker detonated the bomb at the gate of the St. Finbar’s Catholic Church in Jos after the security men stopped him, said Pam Ayuba, spokesman of Plateau state.

The blast damaged the church’s roof, blew out its windows and destroyed a portion of the fence surrounding the church’s compound.

Many others, including soldiers who also had been stationed at the church, were injured in the blast, Ayuba added.

“He destroyed so many things,” the spokesman said.

Jos and surrounding Plateau state have been torn apart in recent years by violence pitting its different ethnic groups and major religions—Christianity and Islam—against each other.

The Catholic church attack also comes after a failed raid on Thursday by British and Nigerian commandos left a Briton and an Italian hostage dead in Nigeria’s far northwest.

British officials have blamed a splinter cell of radical Islamist sect Boko Haram for the attack, something a spokesman of the group has denied.

In a similar incident, three persons, including a child, were killed and dozens injured after a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into a packed church during a Sunday Service in Jos last month.

– ucan

Boko Haram threatens to kidnap Christian women in Nigeria

Nigeria, March 09, 2012: Militant Islamist group Boko Haram has followed up its declaration of “war” on Christians in Nigeria with a threat to kidnap Christian women as part of its latest “campaign of terror”.

Speaking on Tuesday (6 March), two days after the group said that they were planning coordinated attacks to “eradicate Christians from certain parts of the country”, the same spokesman said:

We are going to put into action new efforts to strike fear into the Christians of the power of Islam by kidnapping their women.

He said that they would not harm or sexually assault the women but would “demand as ransom that the families leave our Islamic areas”.

Boko Haram, which has been fighting to establish an Islamic state in Northern Nigeria since 2009, has stepped up since Christmas its efforts to drive Christians out of the region.

On Sunday (4 March), the spokesman said:

We will create so much effort to end the Christian presence in our push to have a proper Islamic state that the Christians won’t be able to stay.

The Christian community has been targeted in a series of church bombings and attacks on individuals this year; the violence is having the intended effect of driving Christians from the North. Many are heading to the mainly Christian South, while others are crossing the border into Cameroon.

– barnabas team