Nigeria

Open Doors USA has issued an urgent appeal for prayer after receiving news that suspected Boko Haram terrorists attacked the predominantly Nigerian Christian village of Zangan in southern Kaduna state around midnight on Monday. Local sources report fatalities and Open Doors says it understands "the entire village has been destroyed."

Anti-Christian hostility drove an Islamic extremist killing spree in the northeastern Nigerian village of Midlu Shalmi, though the attack was portrayed mainly as politically motivated, an area Christian leader said.

More than 900 Christians were slaughtered in Nigeria last year, giving it the distinction of being the nation with the highest Christian death toll. All were victims of the Boko Haram group and other Islamic militants.

With countries like North Korea, Pakistan and Somalia topping the list as some of the world's worst persecutors of Christians, it's hard to imagine that none of these countries hold the highest Christian death toll. In 2012, that shameful distinction went to Nigeria, where almost 70 percent of Christians killed globally were murdered.

Besides hit-and-run attacks by Fulani Muslims, the Islamic extremist Boko Haram group has targeted Christians in Nigeria in its effort to destabilize the government and impose Islamic law nationwide.

The Rev. John Dakwat and his wife were at work in a back corner of their church building when they heard gunshots. Dakwat, who identified the assailants as Muslim, ethnic Fulani herdsmen, managed to hide behind the church building with his wife. From there they were able to escape, he believes, because God kept the gunmen from seeing them.

A car bomb attack in a Christian enclave of Kano, the largest city in majority-Muslim northern Nigeria, has heightened religious and ethnic tensions throughout the country.

At least 20 people have been killed by a series of bombings targeting buses in a predominantly Christian neighborhood in Nigeria's northern city of Kano.

Christian children fleeing from gunmen saved their lives by hiding among the rock formations towering over their village, but a 6-month-old baby and a 13-year-old girl never got the chance.