Nigerian security forces martyr eight Muslim mourners at Arba’een procession in Abuja
Nigerian police have opened fire on a peaceful procession of Shia Muslims marking Arba’een, the 40th day after the martyrdom anniversary of Imam Hussein (AS), grandson and the third infallible successor of Prophet Muhammad (SAWA), martyring eight people and injuring an unspecified number of others in the capital Abuja.
The casualties were reported on Tuesday after police and security forces used live ammunition to disperse thousands of mourners commemorating Arba’een along a major road in Gwarinpa district.
The religious procession was organized by the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), a group that has over the past years been under severe attacks from the Nigerian forces following widespread protests against the detention of its leader, prominent religious scholar Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky.
Abdullahi Muhamed, an IMN member, said participants were walking peacefully along the Abuja-Kubwa expressway when a combined team of police and soldiers fired tear gas and live bullets at them. Muhamed said eight people were shot dead and two were taken away by the security forces.
Videos and images posted on social media and published by Nigerian news websites showed bodies lying on the ground and people running from what appeared to be clouds of tear gas.
“It was around 10:00 am that we started hearing gunshots along the road. The shooting lasted about 10 minutes,” a witness was reported as saying. “I can’t say how many people were killed but the corpses we have counted were eight. What I can tell you is that up to eight people were killed in the incident.”
Media reports said “many” had sustained gunshot wounds after the violent incident.
Abdullahi Musa, the Secretary of the IMN’s Academic Forum, also confirmed the incident but did not provide the exact number of casualties.
“We assembled at the Galadima gate in Gwarinpa around 9:00 am and staged our religious walk peacefully for about an hour. We neither made any demand on the government nor criticized anyone during the trek. It was purely a spiritual exercise for us,” Musa said. “But as we were about to disperse, security operatives arrived at the scene and opened fire on our members, injuring many and killing some people.”
Musa stressed that the IMN has been leading the Arba’een procession since six years ago when the Nigerian military demolished the movement’s center in the town of Zaria in Kaduna state and detained Shiekh Zakzaky.
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