21 killed in southwest Nigeria church attack: Official

Gunmen who attacked a Catholic church on Sunday with explosives in southwest Nigeria killed 21 people and wounded others, a local government official said.

Richard Olatunde, spokesman for the Ondo State governor’s office, said that dynamite exploded inside the church in Owo town before gunmen opened fire through the windows during a service.

The violence at St. Francis Catholic Church in Owo town in Ondo State erupted during the morning service in a rare attack in the southwest of Nigeria, where militants and criminal gangs operate in other regions.

Pope Francis said in a statement he had learned of the “death of dozens of faithful,” many children, during the celebration of the Christian holiday of the Pentecost.

“While the details of the incident are being clarified, Pope Francis prays for the victims and for the country,” he said.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack.

The motives and the exact death toll were not immediately clear, but President Muhammadu Buhari condemned the “heinous killing of worshippers.”

Ondo state governor Oluwarotimi Oluwarotimi Akeredolu said Sunday’s attack was a “vile and satanic attack” and appealed to the security forces to track down the assailants.

The attack comes a day before the ruling APC party starts primaries for its candidate in the 2023 election to replace Buhari, a former army commander who steps down after two terms in office.

Security will be a major challenge for whoever wins the race to govern Africa’s most populous country and the continent’s largest economy.

Gun and bomb attacks are rare in Ondo state and other parts of the southwest, but Nigeria’s military is battling a 12-year-old militant insurgency in the northeast, gangs in the northwest and separatist agitation in the southeast.

Parts of northwest and north-central Nigeria in particular have been increasingly plagued by heavily armed gangs who raid villages and target communities and schools for mass kidnapping attacks.