Abuja: Two Catholic Priests and at least 17 worshipers have been killed in an attack by herdsmen on St. Ignatius Catholic Church in Ukpor-Mbalom community in Gwer East Local Government of Benue State in Nigeria.

Stressing that the country will not bow to the machinations of evildoers, President Buhari vowed that the assailants would be hunted down and made to pay for the sacrilege committed.

The Catholic Diocese of Makurdi confirmed the killing of two of its priests,Fathers Joseph Gor and Felix Tyolaha, in an early hour attack on St Ignatius Quasi Parish.

A statement by its Director of Communications Fr Moses Iorapuu said that the attacks were perpetrated by herdsmen who stormed the Mbalom community and killed the two priests during the morning mass at the church.

The diocese expressed regret at the nonchalant attitude of the security agencies in containing the killings.It said the herdsmen, who stormed the community, burnt down houses, destroyed crops and killed people. The church, therefore, urged the relevant authorities to stop the killings in the Benue valley.

Iorapuu said the diocese had been active in providing food and relief materials to Internally Displaced Persons (IDP’s) since the onset of hostilities in the state and wondered why it could be marked as a target of attacks. “The attack on the priests is an attack on everything that we ever stood for and believed in.”

Fr. Gor had before the attack written on Facebook; “Living in fear. The fulani herdsmen are still around us in Mbalom. They refuse to go. They still go grazing around us. No weapons to defend ourselves.”

Herdsmen attacked the church during the 5.30 a.m. Mass.

Central Nigeria is in the grip of a security crisis as nomadic herders and sedentary farmers fight over land in an increasingly bloody battle for resources.

The conflict is now more deadly than the Boko Haram jihadist insurgency that has ravaged Nigeria’s northeast and is becoming a key issue in the upcoming 2019 presidential polls.

Benue state lies in Nigeria’s so-called Middle Belt that separates the predominantly Muslim north from the largely Christian south.

The area has long been a hotbed of ethnic, sectarian and religious tensions between indigenous farming communities, who are mainly Christian and the nomadic cattle herders, who are Muslim.

The clashes over land have escalated into a rift that has deepened along nominally religious lines.

Source: Agencies