ABUJA (Reuters) - Gunmen killed
16 people when they fired on worshippers at a church in Nigeria's
central Kogi state during a Monday evening service, police said on
Tuesday.
"A group of three unidentified gunmen stormed the Deeper Life
Church in Okene and opened fire on them, killing 16," Simeon Ille,
spokesman for the Kogi state police, told Reuters by phone.
A witness, who asked not to be identified for fear of being
targeted, said around 10 gunmen blocked off the exits to the church
before shooting the trapped people inside.
Ille said security forces last month prevented a suspected
suicide bomber from detonating an explosive at a different church in
Okene, a town around 140 miles (225 km) south of the capital Abuja. The
suspected would-be bomber fled, he said.
Islamist sect Boko Haram has attacked several churches this year
in Nigeria but Monday's attack was further south than the group's usual
targets.
In February, Boko Haram claimed a prison break in Kogi state when
119 prisoners were freed. The sect has carried out jail raids before
and one of its key demands is the release of its imprisoned members.
The group's strikes are increasingly spreading across Nigeria,
Africa's biggest oil producer. Cities across the north and in the
capital Abuja have been hit in recent months by suicide bombers, never
seen before last year in Nigeria.
The country's 2 million barrel per day crude oil export business
in the southern coastal region has not been affected by the sect's
violence.
The sect has killed hundreds this year in its insurgency against
President Goodluck Jonathan's government. It wants to have an Islamic
state inside Nigeria, a country of more than 160 million split roughly
equally between Christians and Muslims.
The group, which is loosely based on Afghanistan's Taliban,
usually target authority figures and places of worship to settle scores
with people they say harmed their members.
-Reuters