(LifeSiteNews) — Gunmen have stormed a church in Nigeria, killing at least two, and kidnapping the pastor and several other Christians.
A video shared by local news outlets showed a church service at the Christ Apostolic Church being interrupted by gunfire. Armed men entered the building and took people’s belongings as the parishioners were taking cover. The attack occurred in Eruku, a town in the central Kwara state, on Wednesday.
When the police arrived, they found two people fatally shot, while witnesses said they thought at least three were killed during the assault.
“They later rounded up some worshippers, including the pastor, and took them into the bush,” parishioner Joseph Bitrus told Reuters.
A spokesperson for the governor of Kwara said he asked the federal government for the deployment of more security forces after the latest church attack.
Nigeria has been suffering from Islamist insurgency in the northeast, with killing sprees and abductions, often targeting Christians, happening on a regular basis.
Due to the ongoing massacring of Christians and the government’s apparent inability or unwillingness to curb the attacks, President Donald Trump has announced that he is preparing the U.S. military to potentially “wipe out” Islamic terrorists who are killing and kidnapping thousands of Christians each year.
READ: Trump’s UN ambassador calls persecution of Nigerian Christians a ‘genocide’
“If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
An unlikely outspoken advocate for ending the plight of Christians has emerged in the form of rap star Nicki Minaj. She recently spoke at the U.S. mission to the United Nations, saying Christians in Nigeria “are being targeted, driven from their homes and killed.”
A 2025 Global Christian Relief (GCR) Red List report has found that Nigeria is the most dangerous place for Christians in the world. The report detailed how most of the killings in Nigeria occur in northern states governed by Islamic sharia law, where Christians “often live in remote villages in semi-arid landscapes, making them particularly vulnerable to attacks.”