An armed attack followed by a series of explosions, yesterday in Nigeria a massacre in a Catholic church: dozens of deaths including women and children. The causes as well as the motive are not yet known but all investigators think of the continuing inter-ethnic and inter-religious tensions between local populations and the Fulani Islamic nomadic shepherds.
As reported by the local police and media, citing witnesses, at least five armed men opened fire and threw bombs at the faithful inside the Church of San Francesco in Owo, in the state of Ondo, killing several people. In the evening the blood toll was still uncertain and ranged between 20 and 50 victims, with an unspecified number of very seriously injured, then died in hospital.
A video circulating on the internet shows the bodies of some of the victims spilled on the church floor in pools of blood. However, the diocese of Ondo denied that priests or faithful were kidnapped, as witnesses had reported at first.
The Vatican has made it known that the Pope, informed of the attack on the church perpetrated during the celebration of Pentecost, "pray for the victims and for the country, painfully affected in a moment of celebration, and entrust both to the Lord, to send His Spirit to console them".
"Firm conviction" for this "terrible slaughter of innocent children, women and men", Victims of"an unprecedented violence", Was pronounced by the Foreign Minister, Luigi Di Maio.
The Odo, one of the 36 states that make up the Nigeria, it is relatively far from the north where Islamic extremists have been attacking for 12 years Boko Haram and, as its governor Oluwarotimi Akeredolu recalled, the Owo area had "enjoyed relative peace over the years ".
The attack was not claimed, but a local organization representing the interests of theYoruba ethnicity, writes the Ansa, pointed the finger at the Fulani shepherds.
The assault on Saint Francis church it would be directed against the governor Acaredolu for its "strict compliance with the law on open pasture ", supported the Afenifere association, adding that "the terrorists, mostly Fulani foreigners, should be captured and killed ".
A track also accredited by the director of the pontifical foundation Aid to the Church (Acs), Alexander Monteduro"If banditry in Nigeria a few decades ago made use of bows and arrows, in recent years the Fulani have equipped themselves with Ak47, very widespread in the country after the fall of Gaddafi. Lack of good governance and corruption are contributing to all of this".
That of the Fulani is one of the many crises afflicting Nigeria which, in addition to the Boko Haram, is also terrorized by bands of looters and kidnappers in the north-west and center, while the south-east is the scene of movements separatists. There have been massacres in the past with an even greater number of victims in violence between Fulani and permanent farmers.
The phenomenon is mainly due to the scarcity of fertile land created by climate change and the desertification of northern Nigeria which are pushing nomadic cattlemen to find fodder for their livestock further south, devastating farmers' fields.