KURUM, Nigeria — As she lay on the ground after being shot and then slashed with a machete, Dune James Rike looked into her husband’s tear-filled eyes and asked, “Is this the end between us, so we shall not be together again?”
Pastor James Musa Rike said he held the hands of his dying 35-year-old wife and told her, “Hold on to your faith in Jesus, and we shall meet and never part again.” Muslim extremists who attacked Kurum village in the Bogoro local government area of Nigeria’s Bauchi state had already killed two of their children in a rampage that began May 4 at midnight.
Rike, pastor of a Church of Christ in Nigeria congregation in Kurum, next heard the cries of his 13-year-old daughter, Sum James Rike, who lay mortally wounded a few yards away. “She told me that the Muslim militants told her they would kill her and ‘see how your Jesus will save you,’” he said.
The girl told her father that she responded by telling them that Jesus had already saved her, and that by killing her they would only be making it possible for her to be with Him. Rike prayed for her as she died. By shooting and setting homes on fire, the Muslim extremists killed 12 other Christians in the attack.
Bauchi police reported 16 people dead — one man, three women and 12 children. Rike and his son survived the attack, and his adopted daughter, Whulham James Rike, was injured and is receiving treatment at the general hospital in Bogoro, along with five others. The assailants set more than 20 houses ablaze before leaving the village, police said.
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