ISIS Beheads 10 Christian Captives in Nigeria as Retaliation for Baghdadi’s Death
The Islamic State group released a video Thursday claiming to show its militants beheading 10 Christian captives in Nigeria.
The 56-second video is part of ISIS’s recently declared campaign to “avenge” the death of its former leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi during a U.S. military raid in Syria in October. According to the terrorists, the male victims were “captured in the past weeks” in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno State.
ISIS’s news agency, Amaq, posted the footage to its Telegram channel a day after Christmas with Arabic captions but no audio. Men in beige uniforms and black masks are seen lining up behind blindfolded captives in an outdoor area. They then shoot one of the men and push the other 10 to the ground and behead them.
“We killed them as revenge for the killing of our leaders, including Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and [ISIS spokesman] Abul-Hasan al-Muhajir,” said a member of the group’s media unit, according to Ahmad Salkida, a journalist who was first sent the video.
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The U.S. killed Muhajir on the same weekend as Baghdadi, in a separate operation.
Experts told the BBC that ISIS clearly timed the release of the gruesome video to coincide with Christmas celebrations. Islamic State in West Africa Province, or ISWAP, earlier this month released a video of the captives pleading for help from the Nigerian authorities and the Christian Association of Nigeria.
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Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari condemned the apparent killings and urged Nigerians not to let themselves be divided along religious lines.
“We should, under no circumstance, let the terrorists divide us by turning Christians against Muslims because these barbaric killers don’t represent Islam and millions of other law-abiding Muslims around the world,” he said in a statement.
ISWAP split from the militant group Boko Haram in 2016 and has become the region’s dominant jihadist group. It has executed a number of hostages in the past — mainly security forces, aid workers and those perceived to be associated with the government — but never so many at once.
In the past decade, Islamist insurgents have killed about 30,000 people in northern Nigeria. More than 1,000 Christians have been murdered in the country in 2019 alone, according to a recent report by the Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust, a British non-profit run by a member of the British House of Lords, Baroness Cox.
“They attack rural villages, force villagers off their lands and settle in their place — a strategy that is epitomized by the phrase: ‘Your land or your blood,'” the report said. “In every village, the message from local people is the same: ‘Please, please help us! The Fulani are coming. We are not safe in our own homes.'”
Across the Middle East, Christians are at risk of being permanently displaced from their homelands.
Cover image: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. (Screen grab)
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