EASTER SUNDAY ATTACK IN NORTHWEST NIGERIA – Armed men kill five people, abduct at least 30
Gunmen stormed a Baptist church in northwest Nigeria during Easter Sunday service, killing five congregants and abducting approximately 35 others in a brazen daylight attack that has left a rural community shattered.
The armed bandits arrived on motorcycles in Ariko village, Kaduna state, as Pastor Sunday Gajere was reading the Bible to his congregation.
The pastor said the attackers pursued fleeing members through the village. “We saw them with many motorcycles, plenty of them. So they began to follow people, began to kill people, and within 20 minutes, they completed the operation,” he said.
For Timothy Waziri, whose father was among those killed, the attack has compounded an already devastating loss. His elder brother was killed by bandits last December while farming during harvest season.
“I feel shattered. I feel destroyed,” Waziri said, standing near his father’s grave as mourners wept nearby. “The entire family is in shambles, we feel so destroyed and we feel so dejected.”
The Easter Sunday attack highlights persistent insecurity across northwest Nigeria, where armed criminal groups known locally as bandits have terrorized rural communities for years with mass kidnappings for ransom and deadly village raids.
