The timing and nature of the attack placed the fate of Nigerian Christians in stark relief. On Monday, in the early hours of the morning, a group of gunmen attacked a girl’s boarding school in northwestern Nigeria, kidnapping 25 girls, many of them Christian. The attack killed the school’s vice principal, Malam Hassan Makaku, who tried to block the door to the girl’s dormitory with his body.

The fertile Middle Belt region in north-central Nigeria became a killing field in June, when more than 200 Christian men, women, and children were slaughtered in an apparent series of coordinated attacks. The massacre was the latest in a string of killings that have taken the lives of an estimated 7,000 Nigerian Christians so far this year.