{"id":137932,"date":"2025-06-19T17:16:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-19T21:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=137932"},"modified":"2025-06-19T18:15:23","modified_gmt":"2025-06-19T22:15:23","slug":"church-times-horrific-violence-in-nigeria-turns-to-murder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=137932","title":{"rendered":"(Church Times) \u2018Horrific\u2019 violence in Nigeria turns to murder"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>At least 200 displaced people believed to be Christians were killed in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/topics\/nigeria\">Nigeria<\/a>\u2019s troubled Middle Belt last week. The premeditated\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/topics\/warconflict\">attack<\/a>\u00a0on Friday night was described by a senior Anglican cleric as the work of \u201ca well-trained, well-equipped and well-funded\u201d Fulani\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/topics\/islammuslims\">Islamist<\/a>\u00a0militia group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Ven. Dr Hassan John, Director of Research for the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/topics\/church-of-nigeria\">Church of Nigeria<\/a>, said that attackers approached three villages in Benue state, including Yelwata, which they surrounded before opening fire. \u201cThose that tried to flee were either shot or cut down with machetes,\u201d he said. He explained that the initial death toll of more than 100 rose as more bodies were discovered and others, who had been gravely injured, died later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr John told the\u00a0<em>Church Times<\/em>\u00a0that the violence in central states such as Benue should not be understood as a \u201cfight for scarce grazing land\u201d by Fulani Muslim herders driven south by climate change, as it is sometimes termed by some foreign media and governments. \u201cThe perpetrators and their sponsors are known and their agenda, under the guise of fighting over grazing land, has been to strategically wipe out villages, particularly Christian villages, leaving out Muslims in the villages, even if they reside side by side with Christians,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/articles\/2025\/20-june\/news\/world\/horrific-violence-in-nigeria-turns-to-murder\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p><blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">At least 200 displaced people believed to be Christians were killed in Nigeria\u2019s troubled Middle Belt last week <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/FoqcsReaho\">https:\/\/t.co\/FoqcsReaho<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Church Times (@ChurchTimes) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ChurchTimes\/status\/1935631773670494527?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 19, 2025<\/a><\/blockquote> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At least 200 displaced people believed to be Christians were killed in\u00a0Nigeria\u2019s troubled Middle Belt last week. The premeditated\u00a0attack\u00a0on Friday night was described by a senior Anglican cleric as the work of \u201ca well-trained, well-equipped and well-funded\u201d Fulani\u00a0Islamist\u00a0militia group. The<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=137932\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[202,554,108,157,148],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-nigeria-africa","category-religion-culture","category-religious-freedom-persecution","category-terrorism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=137932"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137936,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137932\/revisions\/137936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=137932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=137932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=137932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}