分类： world

JOS, Nigeria – Just seven days after a mass shooting claimed roughly 30 lives in central Nigeria’s Plateau state, Christian worshippers gathered for Easter Sunday Mass in the capital city of Jos under a heavy cloud of insecurity.

The region’s most important Christian festival, a moment traditionally marked by joyful, packed congregations, looked drastically different this year. One of the city’s largest churches, standing just meters from the site of the deadly Palm Sunday attack at an open-air bar, saw attendance fall to less than half of its normal capacity. The state-imposed curfew, which restricts movement between 3 a.m. and 7 p.m. local time, has left most city streets eerily deserted, with only a handful of civilians venturing out for essential activities.

Along the road leading to the church in Jos’ Anguwan Rukuba district, just one single police checkpoint was visible, a sparse security presence that has done little to reassure residents. In response to last week’s attack, Nigerian military authorities announced they had deployed an extra 850 troops to the restive state to bolster security. But for many worshippers, the reinforcement has come too late, and official promises of protection ring hollow.

Standing outside the beige facade of the Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA), 57-year-old congregant John Abo Galadima told reporters he sees no real improvement in local safety. “I don’t feel safe in the community, because the government is not doing enough…in terms of security,” Galadima said. “There is no sufficient security presence here.” To compensate for gaps in state security, church leadership has arranged for its own private security team to screen all attendees before allowing entry to worship services.

Fellow worshipper Marian Mark Andy echoed Galadima’s concerns, explaining that widespread anxiety kept many adherents from joining the Easter celebrations. “I don’t feel safe. People are afraid, they could not come to church,” Andy said.

During his sermon, Reverend Luka Musa Madaki led the congregation in prayers for an end to violence while urging attendees to remain constantly alert to potential threats. “As people of God, you need to stand up, spiritually and physically. The attacks are coming to us too much. You should always remain vigilant and reach out to each other,” Madaki told the assembled crowd.

While Plateau state has a long history of repeated rural violence, much of it tied to long-running resource conflicts between farming and herding communities, last week’s attack in Jos marks a rare and particularly alarming episode of urban violence. Jos itself is home to a mixed population of Christians and Muslims, most of whom have coexisted peacefully for generations. But the region has a decades-long history of deadly ethnic and sectarian tension that has sparked large-scale outbreaks of violence in the past.

This most recent attack is part of a grim pattern of bloodshed in the landlocked state. In one of the deadliest recent incidents, nearly 200 people were killed in December 2023 during raids targeting majority Christian communities across the state. The worst sectarian violence in Jos’ modern history dates back to September 2001, when five days of rioting left nearly 1,000 people dead.

The ripple effects of the attack extended to the city’s Muslim community as well. During weekly Juma’a prayers held the Friday after the shooting, worshippers gathered at Jos’ central mosque under significantly heightened security, with both soldiers and police deployed to guard the site. In his post-prayer sermon, the chief Imam of Jos, Sheikh Ghazali Ismail Adam, called on all believers to prioritize mutual respect. “Dignify humanity, uphold fear of Allah and…promote peaceful coexistence,” Adam urged his congregation.

In his inaugural Easter address from the heart of Vatican City, Pope Leo XIV delivered a urgent, heartfelt plea on Sunday to global leaders holding the power to ignite and escalate armed conflict, urging them to set aside confrontation and choose the path of peace. The pontiff’s call comes as a broad regional war raging across the Middle East, triggered by joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28, has sent shockwaves across the entire region and disrupted economic stability worldwide, casting a dark shadow over Easter celebrations for more than 1 billion Catholics marking the holiday globally.

Escalating tensions between the United States, Israel and Iran have reached a new boiling point, with former U.S. President Donald Trump issuing a stark 48-hour ultimatum to Tehran: reach a negotiated deal or face overwhelming retaliation. This latest threat comes as multiple fronts of conflict expand across the Middle East, search operations continue for a missing American airman, and a strike near a critical Iranian nuclear facility has sparked international alarm over nuclear safety.

The full-scale conflict erupted more than a month ago, when joint U.S.-Israeli strikes against Iranian targets triggered a wave of Iranian retaliation that has destabilized the entire region and sent shockwaves through global energy markets. The disruption has been particularly acute because Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most critical chokepoint for global oil and natural gas supplies, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s daily oil consumption passes.

In a post to his Truth Social platform Saturday, Trump referenced an earlier ultimatum he issued on March 26 that gave Tehran 10 days to strike an agreement and reopen the strategic waterway. “Time is running out — 48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them,” the U.S. president wrote.

Concurrent with Trump’s threat, military forces from both the U.S. and Iran are engaged in a tense search for a downed American service member. On Friday, Iran announced it had shot down a U.S. F-15 fighter jet; U.S. media reports confirm special operations teams have rescued one of the two crew members, but the second remains unaccounted for. Iran also claims to have downed a U.S. A-10 ground attack aircraft over the Persian Gulf, with U.S. outlets confirming that plane’s pilot has already been recovered.

Local search operations for the missing F-15 crew member are being led by combined Iranian military, popular forces and local tribal groups in southwestern Iran’s Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province, deputy provincial governor Fattah Mohammadi told Mehr News Agency Saturday. Mohammadi added that local civilians confronted American search helicopters overnight, opening fire with small arms and preventing U.S. forces from landing to extract the downed pilot. AFPTV-verified social media footage confirms Iranian security forces fired on a U.S. helicopter operating in the southwestern border region during the search.

Iran’s parliamentary speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf used the incident to mock the Trump administration, quipping that the war the U.S. launched has devolved from its original goal of regime change to a frantic plea: “Hey! Can anyone find our pilots?” adding sarcastically, “What incredible progress. Absolute geniuses.”

Retired U.S. Brigadier General Houston Cantwell, a combat pilot with 400 hours of flight experience in conflict zones, told AFP that any downed pilot would rely on standard survival training to avoid capture immediately after ejecting. “My priority would be, first of all, concealment, because I don’t want to be captured,” Cantwell explained.

The threat level rose further Saturday after a strike near Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant left one security guard dead. Russia, which co-built the facility and supports its ongoing operations, announced it would evacuate 198 Russian personnel from the site in response. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi issued a dire warning that repeated strikes on the coastal nuclear facility could trigger catastrophic radioactive contamination. “Continued attacks could eventually lead to radioactive fallout that would end life in GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) capitals, not Tehran,” Araghchi noted, a warning amplified by the fact that Bushehr sits far closer to Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar than it does to the Iranian capital.

Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), wrote on X that the agency has not yet recorded any abnormal spike in radiation levels at the site, but nonetheless voiced “deep concern” over the incident, which marks the fourth strike near a Iranian nuclear facility in recent weeks. “NPP (nuclear power plant) sites or nearby areas must never be attacked,” Grossi emphasized.

Strikes have also continued across the Iranian capital Tehran, where an AFP correspondent on the ground reported thick grey smoke blanketing the city’s skyline Saturday. For ordinary Iranians caught in the crossfire, the conflict has brought widespread chaos and uncertainty. “This war wasn’t for freedom… we just ended up trapped with something even more savage,” 31-year-old Tehran resident Faezeh told AFP via a messaging app. “They bomb randomly, there’s no sign of any specific target these recent days.”

Maryam, a 35-year-old resident of Khansar in Isfahan Province, said Iranian public opinion is deeply split: some citizens hope for an end to the current Islamic government, while others are more terrified of long-term economic collapse. “I’m honestly really scared about our future,” Maryam said. “Things are a disaster right now. Mass layoffs, widespread shutdowns… everything feels overwhelming.”

In recent days, strikes from both belligerent sides have increasingly targeted critical economic and industrial infrastructure, stoking fears that global energy supplies will face even deeper disruption. On Saturday alone, U.S.-Israeli strikes hit an Iranian petrochemical hub, a cement production plant and a cross-border trade terminal on the Iran-Iraq border, leaving one person dead at the terminal site.

For its part, Iran has responded with waves of drone and missile strikes against Israel and U.S. allied states across the Persian Gulf. Bahraini authorities reported Saturday that shrapnel from intercepted Iranian drones injured four people on the island, while debris from downed drones hit two buildings in Dubai, including an office complex hosting U.S. cloud computing giant Oracle. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps also claimed responsibility for an attack on the commercial vessel MSC Ishyka, which the Guards claims is owned by Israel and flagged to a third country, docked at Bahrain’s Khalifa Bin Salman Port.

The conflict has spilled over into Lebanon as well, where the Israeli military has been engaged in nearly daily fighting with Iran-backed Hezbollah for a month. The Israeli military announced Friday that it has struck more than 3,500 targets across Lebanon since the latest round of border clashes erupted. After issuing advance warnings of planned strikes on key infrastructure, Israeli warplanes destroyed a bridge in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, with local reports confirming a second bridge was also hit.

An AFP correspondent in Beirut reported two loud explosions in the capital early Saturday, with thick smoke rising from the site of one blast. The Lebanese health ministry reported that a hospital in the coastal city of Tyre was damaged in Israeli strikes on nearby buildings, which left 11 people wounded. The Israeli military later issued an urgent evacuation order for Tyre’s remaining residents ahead of planned expanded strikes. Tens of thousands of residents have already left the city, but an estimated 20,000 people remain, including 15,000 people who were already displaced from surrounding border villages.