REUTERS

Women cry during a mass funeral for the victims of Christmas day bombing at St Theresa Catholic church. Picture:/Afolabi Sotunde

A Roman Catholic church in Nigeria still in mourning after a Christmas Day bombing by a radical Islamist sect buried its dead amid wails of grief and under the watch of security agencies that still fear more violence.

Neatly dug graves awaited the corpses on Wednesday in a vacant dirt lot in the church’s compound, now turned into a mass tomb.

Nigerian National News reported that the bodies were of those victims who were still unidentified from last year’s bombing at St Theresa Catholic Church in Madalla, a satellite town of Abuja, the capital city of Nigeria.

Forty-four people died in the attack. The parish priest, the Reverend Father Isaac Achi, said only six bodies out of the 26 victims – who were members of the church – had been claimed by their families, while the rest, 20 bodies, were interred at the church premises.

Inside the church, whose front steps have been barred off by iron fencing, red bunting hung above the altar over a crucifix and a painting of Jesus Christ at the Last Supper, his hands open wide, his face serene. About 2 000 mourners and priests surrounded the coffins placed there.

One coffin, covered in Nigeria’s green-and-white national flag, had a pair of black boots sitting atop. The body within belonged to a young boy scout.

Women mourn during a mass funeral for the victims of Christmas day bombing at St Theresa Catholic church.Pict REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde

REUTERS

“As I look at you, I am consoled and comforted. As I looked at the caskets here covered in white, I am comforted and consoled because from the day of our baptism we were given a white cloth,” Bishop Martin Uzoukwu said.

He called on the crowd to forgive, as well as praise God.

The bomb exploded just after 8am as worshippers began to leave the sanctuary after a morning service.

A car bomb detonated near the church’s front steps, cutting down those leaving.

The wounded quickly overwhelmed Nigeria’s chronically underprepared emergency services, filling the cement floors of a nearby government hospital, crying in pools of their own blood. Corpses lined an open-air morgue.

Boko Haram later claimed responsibility for the attack.

Mourners and priests gather for a mass funeral of those killed in a Christmas Day bombing at a Catholic church in Madalla, Nigeria. Picture: AP Photo/Sunday Aghaeze

AP

The sect, whose name means “Western education is sacrilege” in the local Hausa language, is carrying out increasingly sophisticated and bloody attacks in its campaign to implement strict sharia (Islamic law) and avenge Muslim killings in Nigeria, a multi-ethnic nation of more than 160 million people.

The sect was blamed for at least 510 killings last year alone. The violence has not stopped this year. The sect claimed a co-ordinated assault in the city of Kano that killed at least 185 people on January 20.

Outside the church, the situation remained tense on Wednesday. The crowd within hysterically shouted away a local Muslim leader who wanted to attend the ceremony.

Bishop John Onayekan called on those gathered to pray for those who organised the attack.

“Beyond forgiveness, let us pray for the conversion of those who have allowed themselves to be used by the devil to perpetrate such a diabolic act targeting and killing innocent men, women and children,” Onayekan said.

There was a heavy security presence at the service and officials set up metal detectors at the doors to guard against a possible repeat attack by the sect on mourners.

This second set of burials comes after a surge in violence in the past three months by Boko Haram, a movement loosely modelled on Afghanistan’s Taliban.

The alleged mastermind had been arrested, but had escaped. The government said this week it had arrested the Boko Haram spokesman, who had appeared regularly to claim responsibility for attacks carried out by the group.

He also claimed responsibility for the attacks in Kano, the group’s deadliest strike to date.

The attack on the church had been thought to be revenge for an attack on Muslims in Nigeria’s volatile, religiously mixed middle belt during a Muslim holiday in November.

But violence by Boko Haram, which has begun targeting Christians, has inflamed long-time tensions between the groups. Thousands have died in recent years in rioting sparked by ethnic and religious differences in this nation largely divided into a Christian south and a Muslim north. – Sapa-AP & Reuters