Nigeria

During the weekend a dozen or more Christians from villages in northeast Nigeria were killed in dual attacks by militants connected with Boko Haram, an Islamist terrorist group currently contesting the Nigerian government for control of that nation’s northern provinces.

Boko Haram has begun a vicious campaign of forced enslavement and conversion to Islam against Nigeria’s Christians.

The violent Islamist group Boko Haram and its splinter cell, Ansaru, have finally been designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations by the United States.

Instead of sectarian strife, Islamic terrorism sanctioned by state-sponsored discrimination against Christians in northern Nigeria has led to outright genocide, the general secretary of the Christian Association of Nigeria told Morning Star News.

Suspected members of Boko Haram attacked four settlements in Nigeria’s Borno State, killing a pastor and torching four churches, according to AllAfrica Global Media.

A Nigerian Christian leader was killed Wednesday after armed militants burst into his home, according to BNL news service.

African Christians are divided over a proposal to grant amnesty to the militant members of Boko Haram, the violent Islamist sect whose bombings have killed thousands of believers and destroyed hundreds of their churches in northern Nigeria.

Since Nigeria’s government has proved itself incapable of protecting the country’s Christians, the militant Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta has pledged to protect them by targeting Islamic institutions with retaliatory violence.

Christians in central Nigeria could mourn their dead Sunday, February 24, after the massacre of a Christian family while sectarian clashes killed one person and left churches, homes and mosques burnt, officials said.

Minority Christians in northern Nigeria were on edge Thursday, January 24, after militants killed at least 23 people for disobeying Islamic religious law, known as Sharia, residents said.