Abuja – Nigerian security forces have arrested suspected attackers of a church in the southwestern city of Owo that left at least 40 worshippers dead and many others injured, the defence chief said on Tuesday.
The violence at Saint Francis Catholic Church in Owo, Ondo State on June 5 drew international condemnation and was a rare attack in the country’s usually safer southwest region.
Government officials say they suspect Islamic State West Africa Province was behind the attack, though the group usually operates far away in the country’s northeast where a jihadist insurgency has been grinding on for more than a decade.
“We have arrested those behind the dastardly act in Owo,” the Chief of Defence Staff, General Lucky Irabor, told reporters in the capital Abuja on Tuesday.
He said the suspects were arrested through a joint operation by the military, police and other security forces.