Nigerian authorities said Sunday, July 8, that at least 63 people were killed when suspected Muslim herdsmen armed with guns and machetes stormed Christian villages, while missionaries claimed over 50 pastors and missionary leaders died in separate violence.
About 30 Sangha Parivar activists forcibly entered Immanuel Sakineh House Church and began attacking the congregation, alleging that they were involved in the forcible and fraudulent conversion of Hindus to Christianity; after destroying all the Bibles and Christian literature they could find, the activists then phoned the Basappakatte police station who immediately took Pastor Mounesh into custody for further inquiry.
Both the Central Assembly of God Church in Tehran and its summer campsite have been closed by the Islamic authorities, according to the Farsi Christian News Network.
Nigerian authorities said Sunday, July 8 that dozens of people have been killed after suspected Muslim herdsmen armed with guns and machetes stormed Christian villages, while missionaries claimed at least 50 pastors and missionary leaders were killed in separate violence.
It’s been almost three years since Iranian officials arrested Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani on charges of apostasy, but now Iranian judges may add crimes against national security and blasphemy, according to Christian Solidarity Worldwide.
Three violent African Islamist groups are now networking together to further their attacks against that continent’s Christians.
As the Islamists of Boko Haram continue to terrorize northern Nigeria, local residents are still reeling from the bombing of three of Kaduna’s churches weeks ago.
Thousands of Christians have fled their homes in Syria where news emerged Tuesday, July 3, that intelligence agencies run dozens of torture centers where detainees are beaten with batons and cables, burned with acid, sexually assaulted, and have fingernails torn out.
Native Christian missionaries in Egypt remained concerned saying at least two fellow believers were killed by suspected Islamists since Mohammed Morsi was declared the country’s president.
The rise of Christianity and the accompanying spread of its clandestine house churches in Iran is seen as a serious threat by the Islamic state’s senior clerics.
Vietnamese officials in Dien Bien Province recently destroyed two new church buildings belonging to minority Hmong Christians.
Suspected members of the Islamist Al-Shabaab killed 17 worshipers in coordinated attacks on churches in Garissa, Kenya, according to International Christian Concern.
Kazakhstan’s Supreme Court has acquitted an evangelical pastor on charges of “severe damage to health due to negligence” after praying for an ill man, but devoted Christians in another former Soviet republic, Azerbaijan, were awaiting whether a high court would ban their church.
Some 10,000 people attended Cuba’s first evangelistic outdoor rally in decades with many accepting Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior at the event, where a huge storm miraculously passed, an evangelical aid and mission group said.
The militant Islamist group Boko Haram recently declared war on the Nigerian state and its Christians, vowing to attack them both until it establishes an Islamic state in place of the current secular government.
Vietnamese security forces have destroyed two churches of minority Hmong Christians in northwestern Vietnam and threaten to tear down a third, a Christian news agency said Wednesday June 27.
A group of Nigerian missionaries and Christian converts have managed to escape a battle field in northern Nigeria where some militants embraced Christianity, but elsewhere Christians faced Islamic attacks, a key mission leader told Worthy News.
Lao authorities have jailed four Christians, including two Thai citizens, in northern Laos after they were caught explaining the Bible to at least one Lao man, their supporters told Worthy News.
As many as 200,000 people are being held in North Korean labor camps; many inmates have no hope of release because their keeper’s ideology considers human criminal behavior to last “for at least three generations,” according to Jo Chung-Hee, a former Communist who converted to Christianity.
Members of the Nigerian Islamist sect, Boko Haram, intend to make June their bloodiest month as they continue their attacks on Christians, according to International Christian Concern.