Seventy-one people died and over 120 were injured when a bomb exploded under a bus in a crowded bus station in Abuja, Nigeria.
Christian leaders in the nation said that the attack was carried out by the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram in their deadliest attack on the country’s capital.
Friar Patrick Tor Alumuku, the director of Communications for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Abuja, told reporters that the bus depot where the explosion happened destroyed 16 luxury busses and 24 minibuses.
“The bus depot where the explosion took place is normally used by a large number of commuters to get to work in the center of the capital,” FFr. Alumuku said. “The victims are therefore normal people, who belong to the working class.”
The bus station was described as being in a “poor, ethnically and religiously mixed” area. Boko Haram has been working to create a civil war in the nation that is almost evenly split between Christians and Muslims.
An surprise terror attack on a school just before dawn has left at least 29 children dead.
Nigerian military spokesman said Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram targeted the school before dawn so they could kill as many children as possible before they realized they were under attack.
A teacher in the school told reporters that the terrorists set fire to a boy’s dormitory and then stood by any window that did not have bars in front of it to slit the throats of any student who tried to escape the flames.
Spokesman Abdullahi Bego said he could not tell why the school was left unprotected by government troops and that the state’s Governor would ask the federal government why they were not there. Students and teachers quickly abandoned another school in the state after military troops withdrew their protection Monday.
Nigerian Islamic terrorist organization Boko Haram has taken to a new tactic to try and boost the morale of their soldiers. They are kidnapping Christian women, forcing them to convert to Islam through violence and then are forcing them to marry terrorist fighters.
A 19-year-old woman identified only as Hajja escaped from the group after four months of captivity. The Christian woman said she was forced multiple times to kneel and beaten while her captors yelled at her to worship Allah. She said she eventually pretended to go along with them because a fighter told her she was about to be beheaded.
She told reporters that she was forced to be a slave for a group of fourteen terrorists and was used as bait to lure in civilians working with the military so that the terrorists could slit their throats. She reported being forced to watch multiple murders at the hands of her captors.
Hajja now lives in the nation’s capital city of Abuja and is free to worship Christ. She says that she has trouble sleeping at night because of nightmares related to her captivity.
The Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram has targeted Christians for extermination in northern Nigeria and has killed more people for their faith in Christ in one year than the rest of the world’s martyrdom of Christians combined.
The Jubilee Campaign released a report showing that close to 1,200 Christians were killed for their faith in northern Nigeria. The persecution watchdog group Open Doors agreed with Jubilee’s data that more Christians have been killed in Nigeria than the rest of the world combined in the last year.
The group released their information at an event sponsored by the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom.
One of the event’s speakers was Adamu Habila, a Nigerian Christian who survived being shot in the head at close range by a Boko Haram militant when he refused to convert to Islam.
“I give thanks to God Almighty for keeping me alive up to this moment. I know if not because of God I am a dead man now,” said Habila. “But because of His grace I am still alive in order to testify the goodness of God in my life and the work of God in my life.”
The U.S. State Department officially declared Boko Haram a terrorist organization last week.
The United States has officially designated the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram as a “foreign terrorist organization” in a step designed to help Nigeria eliminate the group.
The move means that U.S. regulatory agencies can block business and financial transactions with the group. They can also seize assets of the organization that are found in U.S. owned companies or banks.
The state department said in a press statement that this is “only one tool in what must be a comprehensive approach by the Nigerian government to counter these groups.”
The group had not been given the official designation because the U.S. had considered the group only a domestic terror group. The move by the state department comes from the belief that the group has been working on an international agenda since connecting with al-Qaeda.
Boko Haram terrorists wearing military uniforms slaughtered 19 people at a checkpoint in Nigeria’s northern Borno state.
While the terrorist group has not yet claimed official responsibility, the BBC is reporting that multiple witnesses linked the killers to the terrorist organization. Borno state has been under a state of emergency as the Nigerian military has been trying to eliminate the Islamic extremist group.
“We were asked to get out of our vehicles and lie face down by nine men dressed as soldiers who blocked the road,” a witness told AFP news agency. “They shot dead five people and went about slaughtering 14 others before someone called them on a phone and said that soldiers were heading their direction.”
Witnesses say the terrorists fled the scene on motorcycles. They claim they knew the men were not soldiers because the military does not allow soldiers to have beards.
The terrorist group targets both military and civilians and has killed more than 2,000 people since 2011. Most recently, they attacked an agricultural college in northeast Nigeria and shot 50 students while they slept in dorms.
Islamist terrorists killed 50 students in northeastern Nigeria while they slept in their dormitory according to local officials. Continue reading →
Local officials are reporting at least 18 people are dead after Boko Haram terrorists attacked a vigilante group in Borno state.
According to reports, the majority of the dead are vigilantes who tried to keep Boko Haram from taking over the town of Benisheik. The attack comes on the heels of a major military operation against Boko Haram camps that killed about 50 terrorists. Continue reading →
A new front in the war against Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram in Nigeria has resulted in the deaths of 20 vigilantes that resisted the group’s attempt to control a town in Borno state.
Vigilante groups have now risen across the north as Nigerian citizens fight back against the terrorists wanting to force an Islamic state on the region. Continue reading →
Boko Haram has struck again in Nigeria, killing 35 people in the northeastern part of the country.
Government officials in Borno state say Boko Haram terrorists raided the village of Demba after the locals would not surrender to them. According to a rescue worker in the region, the terrorists set houses on fire, shot victims and even slit throats of the residents. Continue reading →