Currently 16 full-time pastors are among nearly 900 Eritrean Christians known to be jailed in local prisons, military confinement camps and shipping containers for daring to meet secretly for prayer and worship outside government-sanctioned churches.
Native missionaries in Liberia are rebuilding damaged churches and evangelizing to help end ethnic and religious strife in the African nation, where two United Nations peacekeepers were injured Wednesday, March 23, UN and Christian officials said.
A leading evangelical pastor disappeared off the streets of Asmara four days ago, presumably detained by Eritrean security forces and jailed at some unknown location.
Last Sunday evening, Eritrean security police arrested 16 Protestants for watching a Christian video together in a church member’s home in the town of Adi-Kibe.
The last 30 from a group of 131 Sunday school leaders and children have been released from custody, but a further church leader has been arrested.
Another 31 Eritrean Christians have been jailed by police in towns north of the capital Asmara over the past 10 days. The latest police sweeps brings the total to 187 arrests for “illegal” Christian activities in Eritrea since the beginning of January.
Eritrea’s controversial President Isaias Afwerki ended a three day official visit to Pakistan Sunday, February 27, pledging to respect “democratic values” amid pressure at home to release hundreds of Christians, including children.
Muslim militants attacked the Christian community in Demsa village, Adamawa state, northern Nigeria, on Friday, February 4, killing 36 people, destroying property and displacing about 3,000 others. The surviving Christians have taken refuge in Mayolope village in the neighboring state of Taraba.
Christian leaders in northern Nigeria say a report released in December by the government of Kano state grossly underreports the number of Christians killed by Muslim militants in violent attacks last year. Estimates of the value of churches and homes destroyed in the clashes are also much too low, leaders claim.
Fresh violence broke out in the central Nigerian state of Plateau when Muslim militants attacked the village of Gana-Ropp in the Barakin Ladi local government area, killing Christian community leader Davou Bulle and injuring his wife and son, who remain in critical condition at the Plateau state Specialist Hospital in Jos.
Sixty members of the Rema Charismatic Church in the Eritrean capital of Asmara have been arrested and jailed for holding a New Year’s Eve celebration in the home of one of their church leaders.
Opposition to Christian evangelism on the campuses of two Nigerian institutions of higher learning has resulted in the murder of Sunday Nache Achi, a fourth-year architectural student at Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University in the northern city of Bauchi.
Police authorities have arrested 10 Muslim militants in Dutse, the capital of the state of Jigawa in northern Nigeria, for perpetrating an attack on a team of Christian evangelists on Tuesday, November 23. The incident reportedly caused two deaths and left at least 20 people with injuries.
Muslim militants have threatened to kill Christian nurses serving at the Federal Medical Center in the town of Keffi, in the central state of Nasarawa, Nigeria, unless they stop conducting Christian worship services.
An Islamic militant group that has been terrorizing non-Muslim communities in the northern Nigerian states of Boro, Yobe, and Kebbi since the beginning of the year struck again on September 20, burning villages, killing four policemen and kidnapping seven Christians.
Eritrean security police pounced on five evangelical Christians holding a prayer meeting in their church office in Asmara last week, hauling them off under arrest to a local police station.
On Tuesday, May 11, thousands of Muslims in the northern city of Kano took to the streets in protest against recent attacks on fellow Muslims in the town of Yelwa in nearby Plateau state.
Fresh religious violence has erupted in Yelwa town in the central state of Plateau, Nigeria, two months after Muslim militants killed a pastor and 48 members of his church there on February 23. The latest Muslim-Christian clash has resulted in the deaths of 350 people and the disappearance of 250 women and children, according to police reports.
Violence in Kaduna which has claimed 1000 Christian lives and destroyed 63 churches just this year, “must stop” says the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN),in a report from the U.K-based Barnabas Fund.
Muslim fanatics burned down 10 Christian churches in the town of Makarfi in the northern state of Kaduna, Nigeria, on Saturday. Claims that a mentally retarded Christian teenager desecrated the Quran, the Muslim holy book, apparently incited the attack.