(ANS - Rome) – While the tragedy perpetrated by fundamentalist terrorists in France has received worldwide coverage in the media, another massacre by Boko Haram militants in Nigeria has received barely a whisper in the mass media. According to an official of the Nigerian army, quoted by many international agencies, there were about 2,000 victims, mostly civilians.

In Baga in the north-east of Nigeria, Boko Haram attacked a military base of the Multi-National Joint Task Force composed of troops from Nigeria, Chad and Niger, resulting in a hundred deaths. Immediately afterwards the militants attacked again and set fire to the city of Baga in the North-Eastern state of Borno. According to an official of the Nigerian army, quoted by the BBC and many international agencies, it is feared that almost two thousand people were killed, mostly civilians.

In 2009, militants of Boko Haram launched a military campaign in Nigeria with the aim of creating an Islamic state. Their campaign has left at least 1.5 million people homeless and thousands more dead. Their targets include churches, schools and government buildings. They have kidnapped Christian women and children. Their most recent horrendous strategy involves the use, almost certainly forced, of 10-15 year-old girls as suicide bombers, blown to bits by remote control explosions. The aim of Boko Haram – a name which means 'Western education is evil' – is to erase all traces of Western civilization.

As Pope Francis said: "religious fundamentalism, as well as destroying human beings through horrendous massacres, is also a denial of God himself, relegating him to a mere ideological pretext."

Posted on 14/01/2014