(LifeSiteNews) — More than 100 Nigerian Christians were brutally murdered and hundreds more were injured in brutal attacks carried out over Christmas, according to numerous reports.
The attackers struck more than 20 villages in a range of counties of Nigeria’s Plateau State on Christmas Eve, according to International Christian Concern.
Reports vary concerning the number of people killed, with estimates ranging from between 140 and nearly 200 people in the majority-Christian areas. Many of those killed were women, children, and the elderly.
International Christian Concern cited numbers from Amnesty International Nigeria, which said that a total of 194 people had been killed in the attacks. The group also said that over 300 people were injured and some 29,350 were displaced.
Christianity Today reported that the massacres are suspected to have been carried out by “extremists among Fulani Muslim herdsman against Christian farming communities.”
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Reacting to the massacres, Nigeria’s International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety) openly declared that they see “the latest butcheries” of “not less than 160 defenseless Plateau Christians” as evidently the “clear handiwork of Fulani Jihadists (Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen and Jihadist Fulani Bandits)” as well as “conspiratorial security chiefs and operatives particularly the operatives of the Nigerian Army, the Nigeria Police Force and the DSS.”
The organization expressed suspicion that the murders were carried out as a “coordinated revenge killing” in response to two airstrikes by the Nigerian Defense Headquarters of the Nigerian Armed Forces that killed more than 120 innocent Muslims taking part in a festival on December 3.
“The ‘class criminalization’ sort of revenge killing of over 160 defenseless Plateau Christians must have also arisen from ‘transfer of criminality responsibility’ through class criminalization and ethno-religious hatred and bigotry,” the organization surmised.
A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department told Fox News Digital that the “U.S. Mission in Nigeria condemned the recent attacks in Plateau State and expressed heartfelt condolences for the tragic loss of life.”
“Not a day goes by when Christians are not terrorized in western Africa in the most grotesque ways imaginable,” he said. “Christians are killed for sport, especially Christian children.”
He also suggested that reported murders do not reflect the true numbers.
“For every massacre which you hear about there are probably 10 others which happened in the shadows,” the spokesperson said. “The death tolls are routinely in the hundreds.”
International Christian Concern reported that “Nigeria is one of the most dangerous places for Christians, particularly in the Middle Belt region,” noting that millions of Christians have been displaced in the region and over 50,000 have been murdered in the past two decades alone.
Suspicion concerning the involvement of local Islamic jihadists comes as the phenomenon increased in recent years in Africa amid unsuccessful efforts by western militaries to curb its spread, LifeSiteNews previously reported.
A 2021 report by the Brookings Institute noted that “jihadi insurrections have persisted and are even expanding” in several geographical regions in Africa, including “West Africa, with the border region between Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso particularly affected.”
The rise of the Islamic terror threat comes “[d]espite massive efforts by European nations and the United States — with France and the United Kingdom on the front lines,” the report continued, noting that the U.S. had roughly 6,000 boots on the ground at the time in Africa. Most were tasked with combating the jihadist terror groups.
And recent Islamic violence isn’t isolated to Africa.
Last month, four people were killed and dozens injured in the bombing at a Catholic Mass on a university campus in the Philippines on Sunday. ISIS militants claimed credit for the attack.
READ: ISIS bombing at Catholic Mass in the Philippines leaves at least four dead, dozens wounded
In October, hostilities in a decades-long conflict between the Muslim government of Azerbaijan and a small group of Armenian Christians broke out anew, killing hundreds and forcing nearly all of the roughly 120,000 Christian residents of a region known as Nagorno-Karabakh to flee to Armenia.
And on October 7, Islamic Hamas terrorists invaded Israel from the Gaza Strip, mutilating, raping, and murdering over 1,000 civilians, including women, children, and the elderly, and injuring thousands more. Hundreds of Israeli Defense Forces soldiers were also killed in the blitz, and nearly 250 people were taken hostage, launching the Middle East back into bloody conflict as Israel declared war with the stated intention of eliminating Hamas.