{"id":249507,"date":"2025-11-07T15:16:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T15:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/249507\/"},"modified":"2025-11-07T15:16:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T15:16:08","slug":"bbc-verify-live-drone-footage-shows-moment-of-strike-on-oil-depot-in-occupied-crimea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/249507\/","title":{"rendered":"BBC Verify Live: Drone footage shows moment of strike on oil depot in occupied Crimea"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fact-checking Trump\u2019s claim about killing of Christians in Nigeriapublished at 11:57 GMT<\/p>\n

11:57 GMT<\/p>\n

Thomas Copeland and Peter Mwai
BBC Verify<\/p>\n

US President Donald Trump has ordered the military to prepare for action in Nigeria to tackle Islamist militant groups, accusing the government of failing to protect Christians.<\/p>\n

\u201cChristianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria\u201d he posted on his social media platform, Truth Social. \u201cThousands of Christians are being killed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Claims of a widespread targeted killings of Nigeria’s Christians have been circulating in recent weeks, and last month we fact checked a claim by US comedian Bill Maher in which he said over 100,000 Christians had been systematically killed<\/a> in Nigeria since 2009.<\/p>\n

In Trump\u2019s post he said 3,100 Christians were killed last year alone in Nigeria, compared with a total of 4,476 worldwide.<\/p>\n

The figures Trump quoted appear to be from a report by advocacy group Open Doors and relate to killings the group says were carried out last year.We\u2019ve asked Open Doors to explain how they arrived at these figures but have not had a response.<\/p>\n

Nnamdi Obasi from the International Crisis Group, says \u201cany figures of the numbers of Christians or Muslims killed are questionable, as such claims are not based on any credible databases of fatalities, disaggregated by religious identity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The US-based monitoring group, ACLED (Armed Conflict Location & Event Data), has tracked civilian deaths in Nigeria over many years, collating multiple official reports and media sources.<\/p>\n

It recorded 29 deaths from incidents where the Christian identity of the victim was a reported factor for the targeted violence against them. In contrast, there were 34 deaths from targeted attacks against Muslims in 2024.<\/p>\n

In total, ACLED reported 4,393 deaths from various attacks across the country during last year. Dr Ladd Serwat, senior Africa analyst with ACLED says some of these attacks may have had Christian victims, where their identity was not clear or salient.\u201c<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fact-checking Trump\u2019s claim about killing of Christians in Nigeriapublished at 11:57 GMT 11:57 GMT Thomas Copeland and Peter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249508,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-249507","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}