The ACN report has Ori Hope Emmanuel of Makurdi Diocese’s Foundation for Justice, Development and Peace saying that Fr. Atongo was shot in the left leg by armed assailants identified as Fulani jihadists. “The two passengers accompanying him were abducted by the attackers,” she further said, adding that the injured Priest was receiving medical treatment.
ACN reports that a local farmer, who had just concluded his day’s work, was reportedly shot and killed on his farm in the same area.
In a statement sent to ACN, the Chairman of the International Advisory Board for Makurdi Diocese, Fr. Oliver Ortese, criticized the security forces for failing to intervene during the attack.
Fr. Ortese said that although there is a military post where the farmer’s attack happened, no one from the Nigerian army personnel stationed there came to the farmer’s rescue. The Catholic Priest said that the conduct by the Nigerian military had left many questions on the locals’ minds. “Were the soldiers asleep while these shootings were going on?” he wondered.
The violence is said to have escalated the following day when 20 people were killed in Aondona, also in Gwer West LGA.
Aondona, ACN reports, is the native village of Bishop Anagbe of Makurdi Diocese, who has been vocal about attacks against Christians by Islamists in the West African nation that is Africa’s most populous country.
In Bishop Anagbe’s native village, heavily armed attackers reportedly “opened fire indiscriminately, resulting in civilian casualties and triggering widespread panic and confusion,” Ms. Emmanuel has been quoted as saying, and added, “Many residents fled their homes in search of safety.”
According to the ACN May 28 report, the Clergy, and women and men Religious Sisters who live in Aondona managed to escape to Taraku, a nearby village, where many of the survivors of the tragedy have found asylum at St. Patrick Catholic Church.
On the same day, three members of a family—a father, his teenage son, and a two-year-old child—are said to have been killed in Yelewata Village, Guma LGA. The wife reportedly sustained serious injuries in the attack that followed the brutal beating of a 67-year-old farmer and the destruction of his cassava farm.
Further attacks on May 26 saw five more lives lost in Tse Orbiam and six others in Ahume, Gwer West LGA. According to Ms. Emmanuel, the assailants “indiscriminately shot at individuals, resulting in multiple fatalities, including the death of a Mobile Police Officer on special assignment in the area”.
