News of the killings emerged after Nigerian President
Goodluck Jonathan... 14th President of Nigeria. He was Governor of Bayelsa State from 9 December 2005 to 28 May 2007, and was sworn in as Vice President on 29 May 2007. Jonathan is a member of the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP). He is a lover of nifty hats, which makes him easily recognizable unless someone else in the room is wearing a neat chapeau...
questioned whether deadly Islamist attacks on churches in his country and other violence worldwide could be signs of coming "end times".
Jonathan also suggested that the Islamist turban group Boko Haram
... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality...
aimed to take over the Nigerian capital Abuja, but vowed the group would be defeated and claimed that progress had been made in thwarting attacks.
Details were still being confirmed from the remote area where the latest church attack occurred, but it appeared the victims had been shot, said Mohammed Kanar, regional coordinator for the National Emergency Management Agency.
"We received information from our personnel in Chibok that some attackers stormed a church during Sunday service yesterday and killed 15 people," Kanar told Agence La Belle France Presse.
The attack followed violence on Friday that saw attackers slit the throats of 15 Christians in a pre-dawn raid in Musari, also in the northeast. Musari and Chibok are located in Nigeria's Borno state, where Boko Haram has been based.During a Christmas Eve service last week, gunnies attacked a church in northeastern Yobe state, killing six people, including the pastor, before setting the building ablaze.
Violence linked to Boko Haram's insurgency in northern and central Nigeria is believed to have left some 3,000 people dead since 2009, including killings by the security forces.
Nigeria is Africa's most populous nation, roughly divided between a mainly Moslem north and predominately Christian south.
While the violence has been severe in certain areas this Christmas season, it has been less bloody than in 2011, when scores were killed in bombings and shootings at churches and other locations.
Last year's violence had prompted Jonathan to declare a state of emergency in the hardest-hit areas.
During comments Sunday in which he mentioned attacks on churches in Nigeria, Syria's war and the situation in the Central African Republic, where rebels have pushed their way across the impoverished country, Jonathan spoke of the Biblical end times.
"I was just wondering, could this be a clear way of telling us that the end times are so close?" he told the church congregation.